


No Home for Dead Birds

by wintersnight



Category: Red Robin (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Eventual Dad!Tim, I wanted a universe where Tim does not forgive, M/M, Migrated from the Distractions fic pile by request, New pseuds for some people, Reforming some bad guys, Sad Tim for a minute, The Gray Area, and Dick gets to suffer like fuck, and being a CEO, and fighting crime, what makes villains bad?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2018-09-22 17:49:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 54,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9618515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintersnight/pseuds/wintersnight
Summary: A What-If based off Red Robin #12, alternative ending. The previous 9 Chapters have been posted under the Distractions fic pile; however, it will be posted here as per request.**On hiatus**





	1. I & II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I: “We’re going to see if I need to be in Arkham after all,” he fills in abruptly.  
> II: "We woulda made one hell of a team.”

Someday, seriously _someday_ , he’s going to learn not to piss off immortal bad guys when there’s things like, you know,  _windows_  just casually in the way of a pretty epic escape.

There’s a whole lot of  _owfuck_  when he comes to, blurry eyes sharpening to the familiar overhang of the Cave; in a twitch, the adrenaline floods him all over again, remnants of the fight with Ra’s when that guy almost  _smiled_  and utter those damning words  _“well done, **Detective** ,”_ before kicking his hurt ass right out the penthouse window across the street from Wayne Towers.

After the brutal ass kicking he took and instigating the massive plan to be sure no assassins were going to take out any of the people B loved, falling really seemed no big deal. After all, a new Robin was already in place. His team had been under Cassie’s leadership and doing fine. Wayne Enterprises was secure no matter  _what_. His year-long absence hadn’t been noticed by anyone in or out of Gotham. His system was rigged to send all the proof B is still alive to the Batcomputer should he not log in after twelve hours (Dick would figure it out, Dick would  _save_  Bruce at least— and the Titans have everything he would need to open the massively complicated space/time portal…it’s  _fine_ ). All the loose ends are already tied up. No one else is going to be alone. And that crazy picture, the one that popped immediately in his head when Ra’s had asked  _“where do you see yourself in twenty years, Timothy?”_  is really not a bad way to go. He has a spot on the right side of his parents, his wishes already set-up for the inevitable (everyone else died, so why not his turn?).

And it’s okay. Really, it’s  _okay_ —

He’s already unconscious by the time Batman apparently swooped out of nowhere to pick him right out of the sky.

So waking up is a stretch of the imagination, waking up in the Batcave is painful, jarring because  _this_ —this isn’t his place anymore. He isn’t  _that_  Robin now. It’s been a long year.

Damian and Steph, Alfred and Dick, it’s almost too much to process. It’s worse when Dick’s hand is on his shoulder, when that guy is smiling down at him and—

“Welcome home.”

It’s an automatic response to jerk away, to jerk  _back_  because this isn’t home. There is no  _home_  anymore. Not for him, he’s  _riff raff_.

Instead, Red Robin,  _Red_ , just puts one metaphorical foot in front of another to keep moving—to keep up with  _the plan_. There’s things to do now that he’s not, you know, dead and the massively destructive force of the League of Assassins had been beaten at their own game for the time being. The next crucial item on the To-Do list comes to the forefront when the adrenaline wear down a little and he realizes he’s in the most optimal spot to get the next task started.

No time like the present.

Red’s not hooked up to any IVs and can slide off the gurney beside Alfred, avoiding Dick’s touch altogether, completely missing (or ignoring) the confused look on the older man’s face or the slight pause from Damian and Steph.

“Thanks for the pick-up, B,” he thrown in blandly and goes to his clothes Alfred must have laid out on the other gurney. His (Jason’s) Red Robin clothing are still stained, torn. It’s fine. He’s not going to need it for long.

“Kon! Bart!” While throwing on a shirt.

But Dick apparently wants to play at  _something_  and is moving again, his mouth open to probably say start with  _rote_  “big brothers” shit; the two Titans beat Dick to whatever might have spewed out ( _thank God don’t let me have to listen, to have to **talk**  about where I’ve been, what I’ve had to  **do**_ ).

“Hey,” Kon is watching him get the undershirt over his head (and taking note of all the bandages) and Bart picks up the ripped, stained cowl and cape combo. “I thought we were supposed to be, I dunno, Batfam for the night or something?”

“Cute,” Red deadpans, stepping into the body suit, “KF, you have the device?”

Bart, hands on his hips, just gives him a patient look, “dude  _seriously?_ ” He pulls off his special KF backpack (two words: reinforced motherfucker), and fishes out the smooth metal disc, slightly larger than the palm of his hand. A little more digging and he’s got the accompanying flash drive (the one with the robin in flight—ugh, that shit is painful). Stellar. Gold star for being prepared.

“Awesome, Cyborg gave the all-clear?”

The Bats, who are apparently feeling as strange as he is about being here (it’s been a  _year_ , let’s not have a chat right now—busy) are closing in on them,  _on the low_  since, well,  _Bats_ , as the tunic goes over the body suit. Instead of the cape and cowl, which are just seriously a mess, he fishes a domino out of the utility belt going around his waist. Boots and good to go.

“You know it. He said you may have to tweak the calibrations, doubtful because it’s Vic, but we’re ready to rock, man.”

With decisive nod, Red bypasses the Bats, drops the metal disc on the empty spans of floor, and activates it with his foot. The projection is a circle of static for the moment. He’s moving to the Batcomputer with the flash drive, inserting it before the Bats even reach him, and the big screen lights up with numbers and code. He takes it in for less than a minute, the numbers matching up with the calibrations he’d picked up less that seventy-two hours ago.

The rest of the Titans are coming down the steps from the Manor since, well,  _go time_  apparently. They knew the basics of what needs to happen, so prep is really not necessary—

“Tim, what’s—?” Dick reaches out a second time, an automatic gesture that Red discreetly dodges again, turning away to go back to the portal, make sure the calibrations are good.

Dick is apparently not going to be put off again. The hand on his bicep (a familiar one in the  _used-to-be-okay_  category—how times have fucking  _changed_ , right Batman?) makes him tense unconsciously, ready to fight. Red wrangles  the instinct because, well, this isn’t that time when he was leaving Gotham with Batman stopping him at the city line; instead, he jerks back instead, pulls out of the hold to the surprise on the older man’s face. ( _I’m not a Bat anymore, not your brother, not your partner, not even your fucking friend—)_

“Whoa! Tim,  _talk_ to me, okay? What’s happening here?”

His expression is painfully empty, forced neutrality with the rest of the Titans unconsciously stepping up closer to his back, Red puts on the domino while Dick is  _staring_  at him with something painful on his face too. “We’re going to see if I need to be in Arkham after all,” he fills in abruptly and steps away, pulling the hand-held grapple out of his belt.

“I don’t understand,” Dick’s hand is still hanging there while Damian and Steph in a similar move, step closer to his back— _their_  Batman now ( _his once too, right? Fuck, nothing, not even—_ ).

“You will,” Red replies, pulling the line out while the portal calibrates from the Batcomputer’s auto-synch. By the time he has one end tied around his waist, the projection becomes a swirling vortex of colors and light. The Bats are looking from him to the Titans to the computer to the Portal and back again while he turns to talk directly to the ( _his—wait, not anymore_ ) team.

A glance at the change, anxiety grips Red, the injuries sustained throb in a dull warning of the  _stupid_  shit he’s going to be doing here, but he’s got to focus on the portal, on the calculations and contingencies. He presses the grapple in Kon’s hand. “Okay, on the signal, you pull us out, right?” His stomach clenches hard, but he has to do this. The window of opportunity is going to close soon. It’s now or never.

“Got it.” Kon grips the device with game face  _on_. KF is already on  _that_  train, grabbing one arm, Cassie the other, BB around his waist, Raven under his arms. The whole team digs their feet into the Cave’s unforgiving floor—ready as can be.

Before he hits this part of the plan, Red looks hard at the group of idiots, comrades,  _friends_. “Whatever happens…thank-you for believing.” There’s too harsh of an edge to his voice, one that makes the Bats exchange a glance with a whole lot of  _what the hell is **going on here!?**_  And in a blink, before he can really  _think_  too hard about it, Red lunges forward, taking off at a run, getting speed and momentum so he can leap right into the heart of the unknown.

And the curtains, the  _wall_  that separates space/time, break apart under the onslaught of Red Robin’s resolve and the complex coding directing pilfered Luthor-tech. His body is weightless and yet heavy, flying and yet falling while images and impression flash in the full 360: fights and riots, birth and death, dictators rise to power, governments fall to private armies, too much data to process, too many events, too much—

Red cries out at the escalating images and impressions beating up his cerebral cortex.

He does the one thing that  _should_  work, that once he’s reached the images of a broken Gotham, darker than their current, he’s hit the right spot.

A forced breath through the fear and agony lets Red rears back and yells out, “Bruce!  _Bruce!_  Help!  **Bruce…**!”

And regardless where in time he is, the Batman will always come for his Robin. Even when Jason Todd disappeared in Ethiopia, the Batman wasn’t far behind.

Red Robin has to have  _faith_  in that belief, he’s had to have  _conviction_  to plan on throwing himself into this realm of  _oh_  and  _shit_ —he’s had to maintain that the most incalculable aspect of the rescue is based on Bruce Wayne’s  _will_. He’s hoping he’s right, but really, he’s betting his own  _life_  on it.

Red’s flying/falling body hits the darkness, the metallic sheen of shadows, and the robotic suit looks down at him while those arms with no give clench,  _clutch_ , hold (and sometimes, it’s  _nice_  when the gamble pays off).

The voice that comes out is not the Batman, the Bruce, he knows, it’s tainted with the suit B is wearing, “Robin. Timothy Jackson Drake.  _My Robin_.”

“Bruce,” is shaky when it spills out of him, his gut reaction to this suit spiking fear and  _fight_  instincts but the familiar hold keeps him from falling the  _fuck_  apart because, welp, hate to say  _I told you so_ , but  _here the fuck is the proof._

“Bruce! Batman…!” and Red fights to get his arms inside the strange cape to wrap around B’s waist before giving the zip line around him a massive pull, just to let the Titans know  _fuck, fuck, get me out of here!_

The abrupt, painful tightening with ensuing jerk around his mid-section makes him grit his teeth in abrupt agony since, well,  _owfuck_  and windows that are definitely balls to be kicked through. But Red just locks his arms around Batman ( _his Batman…Bruce_ ) and tries to keep from vomiting all over the futuristic Batsuit as the events go in reverse and just  _really_  this is some crazy time travel right here.

When the portal pretty much spits them back out to present, back in the Batcave, Batman doesn’t bother  _not_  falling right on top Red, even with the hard yell of pain when the sharp edges dig into him. Just those red eyes looking down.

“Bruce,” he gasps, “Bruce!”

The mouth under the cowl twists into something dangerous and the cape comes  _alive_ , digging into Red’s shoulders and arms like a creature trying to drill into his very  _bones_.

Something crazy makes the suit jerk, the metal cowl move and a seam shows itself right in-between B’s eyes—whether by design or desire of the man trapped behind the suit, Red has no idea. What he  _knows_  instinctually is that he needs to get Bruce out of this damn thing before it seriously gets in the mood to attack.

His hands without gauntlets or gloves come up to that cowl, fingernails in the seam, trying to pull it apart and get to his mentor, his friend, his  _partner_  ( _fuck you, Red, not that Robin anymore, remember? That’s Dami now_ ), and all he can do is keep talking, keep  _calling_ , and hope Bruce—however far deeply he’s buried—can  _hear._

“Bruce! Bruce, c’mon,  _c’mon_  and  _help me!_  You have to  _fight the suit_. I don’t know—“ and he yells again as the cape’s claws sharpen to finer points and bury themselves into his biceps and abdomen, but he can’t  _stop_  trying to pull the thing apart, to make his hands and forearms  _strain._

“Please,  _please_  Bruce!” Blood is running again, and after Alfred went through all that trouble to patch his hurt ass up. Fucking inconsiderate, Red.

But the cape flows around the still body, jerking back like it’s going to  _strike_ , and Red’s eyes get HUGE behind the whiteouts ( _this is it—finally, last thing I’m ever going to do it proves I’m not crazy_ ), he doesn’t stop trying, hopes Dick and Dami and Steph and Alfred are  _more_ , are  _enough_  to make Bruce Wayne,  _their_  Bruce come to the fore and fight this fucking crazy  _shit_ —

“Whoa! What  _the actual **fuck**_ —?” Kon is gripping the cape with his indestructible hands on one side while Cassie, her eyes so wide he can see the whites, grips the other and keep the suit killing him. Raven rises up behind this futureistic Batman, floating serenely, her eyes bright with  _power_  and caging the dangerous suit with a slight frown.

“Pull!” Red yells, his wrists cracking, the cowl nudging apart in degrees now that Rave has stepped in to work her magic, his fingers are trembling, and blood is running down, dripping off his elbows and shoulders.

“Father!” Damian is right outside Raven’s power, hands on the barrier with Dick and Alfred and Steph right beside him, horrified and hopeful in the same instance.

Red wedges his fingers in, the sharpness cutting deep into the pads, hitting bone, but he’s pulling, straining until he can get palms in, until he can see a hint of forehead, the glaze over the blueness of Bruce’s  _eyes_.

“Almost! Don’t  _stop_!” and his vision is wavering with the sheen of wetness, his chest hitches while his muscles strain because Bruce,  _alive_ , Bruce who wouldn’t have just tossed him away, Bruce who wouldn’t have abandoned him, taken  _everything away_ without at least,  _talking_. Bruce who, no matter how far out of touch they’d gotten, still believed in  _him…_

With a final yell, Red uses the last reserves of his strength, and finally wrenched the damn cowl  _open_ , which is apparently the way to unlocking the rest of the god-fucking-piece-of-shit- _murder_  suit, and Bruce, in his original Batman body suit without the cowl and gauntlets, collapsed on his chest, full weight pinning Red to the Cave floor.

The second Bruce falls out, Raven jerks backward with both hands, ripping the living suit up and  _away_ , her black energy surrounding it, caging it in when it reached back to the body that previously lived within.

Red wraps one shaking arm around Bruce’s back, pushes with his heels to scoot them back, get them  _away_  from the damn thing, while Raven, Kon, and Cassie wrestle the suit back toward the portal. Bart is suddenly there with both hands under Red’s arms, helping to pull them away, and no one gives a shit if he’s getting blood everywhere or if tears are running down his goddamned face or if he’s making these strange  _choking_  noises. Really, got to have priorities.

Red’s bloody, aching hands grip Bruce tightly to his hitching chest while he watches the suit fight against the Titans, fight to get back to them,  _screams_  in displeasure at being  _empty_  and  _without_. Rave, however, is unimpressed as  _fuck_  and chants with an angry tone that usually means  _so done with this shit, now is time for some power_.

The edges of the cape try to hold on to the portal’s sides when she shoves it through with only a few gestures. Kon and Cassie take care of it with sneers and a whole lot of  _ew, ew, ick_.

The arms, formerly limp by Tim’s sides, twitch and firm, the head on his chest lifts with difficulty as Bruce looks down at him, dazed—

“Tim…”

Red gasps, sucks back in a sob because  _he never though he’d hear Bruce say his name again_ , and slams his eyes closed so Bruce can’t see the  _fear_ , the  _shame_ , the everything…

“I knew…you’d figure it out,” and Bruce’s chest rumbles against his, just reinforcing  _alive_.

Aching, Tim Drake pulls Bruce back down to hold on as tight as he can, to bury his face in the older man’s shoulder so no one can see him fucking crying like this since—shit, so embarrassing. Just, so much.

Bruce, however, winds a shaky arm around his shoulders and pulls them both up, sitting back on his knees to lace a hand in Tim’s way-too-long hair with the other  _tight_  around his back and just  _holding the fuck on_.

Bruce is probably saying something important against the top of his head, something like  _“how long have I been gone?” “What’s with the new suit?” “Did you wreck the Batmobile? You did, didn’t you?” “Please tell me Luthor’s not President.” “Read any good books lately?” “How are the Gotham Knights doing this season?”_  Well, whatever really because it all just floats in and out with Tim’s tinny hearing because his arms are locked and he’s just so  _fucking_  relieved—he couldn’t bring his Dad back, couldn’t bring Darla back, but Bruce…Bruce is  _alive_.

Dick falling to his knees beside them startles both, the eldest of the Robins staring with shock and hope and something so raw that Tim hastily pulls away, staggers to his feet on the other side so Dick can snatch Bruce right up with Damian and Alfred already in line for  _next_.

And Red’s hands are shaky when Kon grips a wrist, letting him turn away from the Bat’s reunion and take off the domino that’s already a mess from his leaking eyes.

“Hey,” Bart has the other while Cassie and Raven and BB crowd around his back, shielding him from the Bats (since, well, they already knew how things  _are_ , Bruce or no Bruce). “Take a minute, just breathe.”

“You did it, T,” Kon’s other hand gently on his shoulder because  _this guy_  always,  _always_ believed, “you were right all along and you saved his ass. Congrats!”

Overwhelmed, Red nods, just a jerk of his head while he forces himself back under control because it’s time to  _go_. He’s got to get out of the Cave before Bruce can start asking those questions and Dick lays it all out for him, or Damian gets to smirk about Robin.

He doesn’t— _can’t_ —see the rejection all over again. Getting it from Dick was enough. After Dami’s worn the R for a year, there’s not going back. The only going back is to the Penthouse perch since Titan’s Tower is off limits now, too. Robin is a member of the Titans; Red, now that the big hunt is over, is going to have to find his own city and try to move  _forward_.

With a deep breath, Red pushes aside the pain, the loss for later. He’s been pushing it aside since Damian walked out in his costume, so what’s a few more hours, really?

“You guys,” he starts hoarsely, “thank-you,  _thank-you_.” Because really, they didn’t owe him  _shit_. He’s not one of them anymore. They’re just  _friends_ , friends who agreed to totally have your back with interdimensional  _time travel_  and shit.

Cassie ruffles his hair from behind, being extraordinarily gentle like she already knows where he’s at, how close he is to breaking wide the fuck open.

Rave, gingerly, disturbed at the waves of despair, touches the middle of his back, eyes for the blood staining his uniform.

BB, hesitant, “hey dude, shouldn’t you be—you know, with them?”

Red half looks over his shoulder just briefly “no,” softly, “it’s not my place anymore. I need to go back to the Perch, patch myself up. Anyone feel like playing taxi to a lone vigilante?”

And Dick, even though it’s said softly, meant only for the Titans, looks up when Alfred wraps his arms around Bruce and mutters against the returned-Batman’s ear. His chest  _aching_  with Bruce  _alive_  and  _here_ , takes on a completely different type of pain when the implications hit  _home_.

He’s on his feet, still in his own version of the Batsuit, mind swimming with thoughts and what he needs to  _say_  and what Tim must be  _thinking_  and how  _long_  it’s been and how  _much_  he’s missed the younger Bat,  _needed_ him,  _wanted_  him with them. How far his family has fractured apart because of hard decisions and painful consequences.

“Tim, wait—!”  _Don’t go, don’t leave me_ ,  _please, please don’t **say**  things like that—!_

But he sees Tim’s mouth move even if he can’t hear the words,  _get me the fuck out of here._

And Superboy is so fast, too fast to counter when he scoops up Tim and gives Dick just a moment to see his little brother’s  _face_  and just,  _God_ , so  _broken_  and Dick has a pang of  _fear_  hit so hard it’s physical pain.  Kid Flash frowns at him and takes off, right on Superboy’s heels, the two speeding out of the Cave.

“—don’t  _go_!  _Tim!!_ ” But  _too late_  is right there in front of him.

Raven, Gar, and Cassie are looking at him, taking in his expression, his outstretched hand. Without a word, Cassie takes to the air, Rave envelopes Gar in her power and the two blink out of sight. Their faces so very disappointed in what he’s let happen—

And Dick lowers his head a little, his fists clenching with recriminations and the sharp tang of failure. He turns slightly to see Bruce’s curious look in his direction while Dami explains that he is now, Robin, Father, the rightful one to wear the tunic. And Dick knows he’s going to have a lot of explaining to do.

 

# II

 

He can’t let the Titans try to patch him up. No, he’s been doing it himself for so long now… Red tells them they have to get back to the Tower, to make sure everything is okay, to go back to their lives outside the superhero business, and he would let them know where he is when he finally settles somewhere out of Gotham.

None of them want to go—it’s so obvious in body language and gentle arguing. Maybe because he’s almost shaking himself apart, bandaging the gouges his arms and abdomen, palms and fingers. Raven argues he’s still acting too shocky. He tells her she’s is going to do great things one day—but he’s not in the Titans anymore, not a Bat. And the group of them all visibly flinch.

They finally leave when he’s bandaged up, dressed in civvies, a t-shirt with Einstein’s original equation, hoody with holes in the sleeves for this thumbs so the bandages can be hidden.

Kon pulls a bro and hugs him hard, the guy so very  _not okay_  with how this is panning out. Bart grips his forearms, face disturbed at whatever he sees. The smaller kid doesn’t need to say anything; his hold tightening to the point of pain is enough to get the message across. Cassie is overwhelmed when her hands gentle and she holds him with her whole body, trying to say  _something_ —he interrupts her with how good of a leader she and BB are doing and the team is in the best hands. Raven doesn’t  _hug it out_ , but her eyes are alight with knowledge. She holds his wrist gingerly, places a crystal in the palm of his hand and closes his bandaged fingers over it. The small object is warm and not from the heat of his skin; it throbs once and then goes dormant. BB…looks  _disturbed_  at this course of action, grips him by the elbow and leans in:

“Dude, let me talk to Dick, okay—?”

“There’s nothing to talk about, Gar,” Red tries to be kind about it. “Bruce is going to get better, Dick’s probably going to go back to Nightwing, and Damian is going to be Robin.” He shrugs slightly, trying to be factual about the whole thing.

Gar’s expression is enough to call him on his bullshit.

“Tim,  _man_ , this is some bullshit—“

“It’s okay,” but his voice is wobbly, “really, it’s just how the cards had to fall.”

“Okay, Tim. But, you call us, asshole, the minute you get  _somewhere_ , you call us.”

He gives a sharp nod and the group of them leave the Perch reluctantly, trying to linger while he packs only a change of clothes and his laptop. Identification and emergency cash. He leaves the Red Robin suit, the utility belt, the harness (Jason’s identity), unsure if he should take it, if he deserves it, if it really is  _his_.

He heads down to the hidden basement when the leave, firing up the old Civic and closing up the Perch. He sets the security system and drives without thinking.

At one a.m., the airport in Gotham is deserted. A few sparse people are scattered around, waiting on flights; the cheery attendant is annoyingly chipper when she tells him about the slightly delay. He sits his ass down with the light backpack, hood pulled up, and deletes the missed calls on his phone.

Dick.

The Manor’s kitchen phone.

Batman’s work cell.

He doesn’t listen to the messages, doesn’t think he  _can_  yet. Maybe with more miles between him and them.

The seat beside him groans and Red doesn’t have to look to know who it is.

“Heard you kicked some ass,  _Pretender_.”

Jason Todd is just doing civvies since, well, the Red Hood would definitely not be hanging out in an airport waiting area.

Red doesn’t comment, not with where he’s at. Half his brain, however, is coming up with contingencies should Jason pull one of his .45s and notch it at the base of his skull or right at his temple; maybe if a blade glints in a metallic half-smile before it sinks under his ribs. The other half of his brain just whispers  _let it happen_.

“You know,” Jason goes on, leaning back, crossing his ankle over the opposite knee like he’s getting  _comfortable_ , like they’re talking about the weather or some shit. Like the last time they’d seen each other hadn’t been for the battle for the cowl and that asshole shoved a batarang in his chest with every intent to kill him. “I think we had this conversation once. Maybe a few years ago, yeah?”

Red,  _Tim_  (because he doesn’t have a name anymore, does he?), waits silently, bandaged fingers twitch.

“I think I told you—hm, now  _where_  was it again? In Titan’s Tower maybe? After I smashed shit up and almost slit you from ear t’ ear. A Joker’s smile to remember me by.” And Jason leans sideways a little, coming closer, but Tim…he can’t  _move_  away. Just waits for it.

“An’ I told ya’ what they’d do to you, didn’t I? Warned you  _all_  about it, Pretender. How one day, when they didn’t  _need_  you anymore, when you were  _all used up_ , they were just going to dump you like a bag of  _shit_  by the roadside. That you were just a putrid meatbag they used as a shield between those psycho  _fucks_  and the pretty little people of this rancid burg. And  _all_  the  _good_  you did for this messed up  _shit stain_  of a city? All the  _sacrifices_? Your mom, your Dad, your friends, your  _sanity_. Didn’t make a damn bit of difference in the end, did it? Didn’t do  _jack_  to change where you ended up. I hate if for you, Pretender, I really do ‘cause yer a smart little shit. But, I  _warned_  ya what was going to happen in the end, didn’t I? Don’t cha wish you’da listened?”

And Tim can only blink rapidly to try and clear his wavering vision because  _fuck you, Jason_.  _Fuck you and your zombie ass_. Even if it was true, even if he was  _never_  really one of the Bats, he did the  _right fucking thing_.

“Betcha wish you’da taken me up on my offer, Pretender. You coulda been  _my_  Robin. You coulda kept your cape and your city and your  _place_. No one would have taken it from you. I wouldn’ta let that shit happen, you feel me?”

His chest hitches, true, but still  _no,_  just  _hell no._  Never would have happened. He never would have  _let_  himself or Jason Todd taint the legacy of the Batman.

The older man sighs a little and straightens, “you snooze, you lose, I suppose. Too bad. You an’ me? The garbage the Bats took out? We woulda made one hell of a team.”

And doesn’t have to look to know those green eyes are now on him, sizing him up, taking him in. The uneasy tension between the two of them in this place compounds, becomes something  _solid_ , an anticipation. From the way Jason’s hand deceptively lose on his leg is close to some kind of hidden weapon to the tense muscles in Tim’s thighs, ready to  _leap_  and rebound against the floor to ceiling windows—

“I been where you are,” finally comes out, a low admission. “And I know a  _whole lot_  about that pain.”

Tim just focuses on breathing, on fighting his instincts.

“He  _chose_ me, you know. I was one of a hundred street rats he saw every night, ones he ran in without stopping to look twice. Dunno what he saw back then. Maybe ‘cause I had  _guts_  enough to try lifting his tires, maybe ‘cause I was gonna brain him with the iron if he got too rough. Who know with him, yeah? But when he grinned down at me, said maybe I should think about another line of  _work_  or some shit, I had him, Pretender. He was thinking about me in the cape right then and there, don’t give a fuck if he says otherwise. And it was fucking crazy how like a dream it was—how I never woulda thought I’d be in the Manor with all the food I could eat and a partner that had my fucking back. Bed to sleep in, whatever I could  _ask for_. All o’ that because he  _chose_  me.”

The old pain rears up and Tim squashes it down because he did good things, chosen or not. He saved people, he…he—

“He’s still fucked up over it all turned out,” the shift is Jason Todd nodding to himself. “You know it,  _I_  know it. Hell, Golden Boy probably still blames his stupid ass for not being  _the big brother_  he shoulda been, teaching me the ropes, which shoulda happened. That fucker. That’s why they give the leeway they do, yeah? Why they still offer for me come back if I wanna, that they can  _help_ , like they can take away what the Pit did and how clawing my way outta my own  _grave_  fucked me up. Like they can fix that shit somehow.” A decisive chuckle, “ _the monster is not in my face but in my **soul**_ : that’s from Mary Shelley, Pretender.  An’ that’s just how it  _is_. The two of them don’t believe it, but that don’t make it any less true.”

A gruff noise, like Jason Todd is trying to  _laugh_  and just can’t manage it.

“All ‘cause he chose me to do the job. You, though…well, he didn’t really chose  _you_ , now did he?”

And the quiet of the airport sinks in a little deeper to his bones because Jason knew all about the scars on the  _soul_.

“Maybe that made Golden Boy’s choice  _easy_ , Pretender, so’s you shouldn’t take is  _personally_. That little demon? He’s  _blood_ , you know. Golden Boy was the  _first_  so  _he’s_  practically blood, too. The first chosen partner. Me, well, second is never as good. But you?  _You_? Just a little high society rich brat what wanted to make a  _difference_. Only thing you had going for you was smarts. Hell, from the old newspapers, he was too  _fucked up_  to tell ya ‘no’ anyways. But ya can’t blame yourself for none of that, you feel me? You did what cha could do. Didn’t matter much in the end of it ‘cause we see how it all fell into place. Ain’t nothing you can do to fight blood ties, kid, to fight them what gets  _chosen_. You should be glad you hung on to it  _this_  long. Hell, now that they ain’t gotta keep it under wraps, where you’re place is  _really_  at, has always been, you can move on with your life. Be a normal kid.   _Fuck_. Sometimes wish  _I_  had that option, but, well, we play the hand we’re dealt in life. Or death.”

With deceptive grace and ease, Jason works his lean body to stand  _up_ , arches his back to stretch. “Here’s hoping you gots a good hand after all this, Pretender. Really. But, hey now, lemme tell ya a  _joke_  before you fly off to whatever bum-fuck Egypt you might be headin’ to.”

For the first time during the one-sided conversation, Jason Todd leans down enough that he can look at the tight expression on Tim’s face, that those green eyes can twinkle with the agony he came here to cause.

“What red and green and splattered  _all_  over?” The maniacal grin, a slash of white in his face, “dead Robins. Heh,  _get it_?”

Without waiting for a retort or reaction, Jason straightens again, laughing to himself as he walks away, and Tim, Timothy Jackson Drake sinks further into the plastic chair, blood seeping through the bandages on his hands because he’s gripping the backpack strap so  _tightly_.

It’s not the only way to bleed.


	2. III, IV, V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> III: "Don't look, Don't look! the shadows breathe."  
> IV: "You know who this is."  
> "Beep."  
> Drabble: If Kon hadn't been listening at that exact moment-  
> V: And he laughs again just as the explosion behind them lights up the night.

## III

The city is unbearable without white noise.

_(Don’t look, don’t look, the shadows **breathe** …)_

Even with the windows closed, locked, secured—he can hear the constant pollution of people outside. Cars, trains, honking, screaming, crashing, fighting, fucking, and it’s so painfully like the ‘Haven, like when he used to visit  _Dick_ , like when he moved out of Gotham and went out at night just to bleed so he  _knew_ he wasn’t the one really  _dead_  living in some kind of third ring. So, when the similarities get too  _close_ , he plays the news; he plays tech shows; he plays reality TV; he plays terrible tragicomedies. He changes it up for black and white films, old Westerns Dad used to like ( _“ **The Sons of Katie Elder** , Timmy, that’s almost as good as  **The Quiet Man**. But for just a half-hour, we used to watch **The Rifleman**.”_ ).

He lets it wash over him without focusing on it, without really  _hearing_. At the drawing table (one of the few pieces of furniture in the place other than an ancient couch, the small television and stand, a hardly-used bed, and mostly empty dresser), his hands move to make schematics. He starts with tech, things for communication, things for protection, things for offense, things to throw, things to drop, things to stick for later, things to make him  _want_  to fly again.

A month goes by when he feels like the city might be suffocating in its own mire, and half-assed drawings of animal logos take some sort of shape since his fingers dither around anyway. The edges start out sharp like the shuriken R and round out like the harness symbol he couldn’t keep ( _Not. Yours. Asshole_.). The two merge in a frighteningly similar style of the Bat symbol on Bruce’s chest before that suit opened to let the real Batman spill out; he crumples the thick blueprint page in sore, taped fingers and sets it on fire in the bathtub for his sanity.

During that month, the cell phone he kept ( _Robin’s. Fuck, throw that shit_ ) lights up too much. In separating his emotions and intellect, he knows Bruce did the right thing because of what was  _necessary_  at the time—having a Robin made keeping Gotham in check more  _efficient._  Considering the whole lot of bad between Bruce and Dick at the end of his career and the following death of Jason Todd ( _‘Pretender…’_ ), he sees the validity in Batman taking on a Robin with no ties—of keeping the next kid in line in a dedicated space outside the realm of family but inside the boundaries of  _obligatory_. The Venn diagrams make a strange sort of on blueprint paper than on stock white 8.5x11; makes the whole things seem like an intelligent engineering choice rather than another sword to the spleen.

_(Every night I fall again)_

He understands the motivations behind it. Dick was the Robin that only got  _part_ of Batman’s rationales ( _the first, practically **blood** , the first chosen one…)_; he stayed because of loyalty, not necessarily because he wanted to take on the same characteristics. Jason was only Robin for a few years; he was too young to get it by the time he was murdered. He was too impulsive, too violent to take the  _time_  to plot out the long lines of logic and reasoning, to map out the contingencies spreading like bloodroot in darkness.

_(Don’t talk of world’s that never were / The end is all that’s ever true)_

The Dark Knight started making a twisted sort of sense when he was still an idiot with a camera, trying not to break his neck on fire escapes all over the city. It’s why he finally decided to show himself—to  _fight_  against the downward spiral before the Bat got himself or someone else killed.

It was never his intention to take the cape.

It was never his  _intention_  to become part of their world, an integral piece in a larger puzzle.

The decision to save Nightwing and the Batman from Two-Face changed _everything_.

If he was  _better_ , he would have left it at that and  _run_ , left their world to  _them_ without forcing himself inside. But just being there,  _fighting_  made him  _want—_

_(Just paint your face in shadow’s smile)_

Everything. He wanted  _everything_  in their world. He wanted to be  _part_  of it, to join in the legacy.

When the Obeah Man killed mom during the Fire Ceremony, sacrificing her like an animal—he understood Dick, understood  _why_.

It’s 1:38 am.

The moonlight is dirty, tainted with the fog around the city.

The blueprint paper under his hand is smudged again, white scuffs instead of neat lines.

A soft vibration rumbles through the table, and he assumes it’s the phone dying again (he should just  _stop_  putting it on the charger), but the screen flashes with impossible things.  _38 messages_ ,  _21 voicemails, 64 missed calls_.

Like it has countless times in the last month, his free hand has an automatic reaction—some muscle memory—to reach; it’s a pang that makes him jerk back, to shy away enough that he throws himself out of the chair and backs up fast. The wall is just right there at his back, broad and textured with the stain of humanity, all the previous tenants.  His heart is beating too fast, hands shaky, twitchy because—

The .45 is heavier than the last time, when he picked it up from beside Dad’s unmoving hand (Batman didn’t speak, didn’t  _deny_  him this) and held it close.

His hand was shaking then too.

He blinks hard when the phone screen goes dark again, and he moves silently back to the drawing table, can take up the seat and scoot himself back in.

_(There’s nothing you can ever say / Nothing you can ever do)_

The drawing on the blueprint is done, the outline of a crow—smudged and imperfect in the dirty brown moonlight. With his free hand, he moves the blueprint away to the keep pile and stares down at the empty desk.

Drake Industries is taken care of.

Dana is alive and living in New York. She’s dating again—she’s moved  _on_.

Nightwing works with Batman and Robin, moving like they always  _should_  have been together. Gotham has always been soaked in the  _what ifs_ of the criminal population—the change has been nothing short of perfect (like years ago when Dick started out as Robin and the city started to  _change_  for the better).

The Red Hood has been spotted with the Outlaws.

The Titans took down The Light themselves without JLA intervention.

Next week, a demolition crew will arrive at the Drake estate—and burn the house to the ground.

Everything is good.

Everything is  _fine_.

The To-Do list is empty for the first time in  _years_.

_(So slide back down and close your eyes/sleep a while, you must be tired…)_

And  _click_  as the barrel slides closed over the empty chamber. From the drawer under the drawing table, the clip is light, only  _one_  nestled down.

It’s fine, only need  _one_. No contingency necessary.

_(Dream the crow black dream…)_

Dad would be angry…Mom, she might understand. Who knew?

And he sits  _back_  in the squeaky chair with the weight on his thigh, forefinger laying on the barrel, on the trigger guard—his constantly moving brain is mercifully  _silent_  when the hand and forearm find the strength. The niche at his temple is perfect, so disturbingly similar to the time before this, back when his future self has chosen guns over  _thou shall not kill_. The future is going to change anyway, isn’t it? Because—

he’s just as dedicated now as then, just for different reasons  _(stop being a burden, a fucking **meatbag** , right?)_

The safety is a flick, his thumbs knows the shape of the metal pad like it knows a batarang, a grapple, a smoke pellet, and  _God_ , he can finally fucking  _smile_. More than a year, since before death followed him, striking everyone, always leaving him the  _last one standing_ …

He can fucking  _smile_.

Finger inside the trigger guard, and the  _weight_  on his chest, his shoulders, finally starts to  _ease_  just a little. So maybe this is how it always should have gone—

( _Never should have been Jay on the end of that crowbar—should have been me first, the stand-in between the real sons)_

_(God, Bruce why didn’t you explain it? I would have **understood** , no one would have had to get  **hurt** )_

But no one did. No one but him.

It’s all okay, it’s going to be  _okay_  now.

Fuck, eyes are heavy and blurry and it shouldn’t—

The middle joint touches the trigger and starts to tighten.

_Feels so **right**_   **.**

And—

The wall crumbles like a wrecking ball went through it, opening up the stagnant apartment—filling it  _up_  with the world outside and, Kon,  _Kon_.

He’s floating just a few inches over the floor, both hands out, eyes so wide, he can see the whites surrounding the ring of blue. Superboy, the shield t-shirt on, but the  _face_  is all Conner, a twist of confusion and fear—not the brash optimism.

_Who are you?_

“Tim,” and the name sounds so strange, “ _Tim_.”

His shouldn’t doesn’t unlock, elbow at a precise angle, but he blinks just once, mouth open, no sound coming out. He hasn’t spoken in—

“Tim, man, I—“ Kon swallows hard, floating just a little closer, hands still out like he’s trying to catch something, “I need you to put the gun down.”

But he isn’t moving, just staring because this has to be something cooked up by his unconsciousness—to make him reconsider, to show there might be _something_  left. The hollow, empty spans of shadows keeps pulling, clawing, and he blinks again, finger tightening.

“Please, Tim,  _put the gun **down**_.”

His mouth opens again, but this time the words, even hoarse and wavery from silence, come up from the depth of his chest to spill out on the dirty, broken floor between them, “all you need to do is turn around, and pretend you were never here.”

Because it’s  _time_  and he doesn’t want Kon,  _Kon of all people_ , to see this.

The meta chokes, his face twisting with some kind of  _sick_  realization about what’s happened here.

“You can’t,” comes out fast, babbled, “N.O.W.H.E.R.E—uh, we’ve got to fight them and Cassie doesn’t think we can  _win_. We need a strategist if we’re going to stand a chance. We—we can’t. Tim,  _you_  can’t—“

“You need…to gonow.” Because the JLA would help. The JLA would know what to do, and Batman and Robin would be there to make  _plans_  and it would be  _better_ —

“Bart, Tim. They have  _Bart_.”

_Blink_.

“Bart?”

“Yes! Yes, they have Bart. He’s…Tim, he’s—  _please_ ,  _please don’t do this_ ,” and now Kon’s voice is wavering too, the meta’s check hitching with a sheen over his eyes. “ _Fuck_ ,  _please_. You’re my  _best friend_ , I can’t  _lose_  you. Please,” Kon drops to his knees, staring up, “fucking  _please_ , give it to me.”

_Blink_ , and his hand is shaking a little, the barrel trembling slightly where it’s pressed into the side of his skull. He stares down helplessly.

“Tim,  _give me the gun_.”

_Breathe_.

“Give me the gun and  _help us_. Tim,  _Tim!_   _Come back! **Come back**_!”

_(Every night I burn / Waiting for the world to end)._

 

## IV

_“You know who this is.”_

_Beep_.

He clears his throat a little, “It’s me. I miss you. I’m…I’m  _sorry_  things happened the way they did. I hope…I hope you’re  _okay_ doing whatever you need to do. I  _hope_ you’re finding what you need. Just… _call me_  when you can, okay?”

**

_“You know who this is_. _”_

_Beep._

It’s been a hard night, fighting with himself, with the criminal elements, with Robin, with  _everything_. What he wouldn’t give to have—

“Hey. It’s been… a while. I miss you. I hope you’re okay. I’d be  _better_  if you’d call, just for a second. Not because I’m trying to intrude, but because I…I miss your voice. I miss talking to you.”

**

_“You know who this is.”_

_Beep_.

He’s weak, tired—the strain evident even with the cowl  _on_. “I think…I think I was right in the first place,” is hoarse, coming from a throat that had been punched already, “I think it should have been  _you_ wearing this all along. Just,  _God_ , please, _please_  call me. Just…just  _talk to me_  so I know I’m not crazy.”

**

_“You know who this is.”_

_Beep_.

Fingers move over the keyboard in a flurry, trying to catch up with data, but the system still dialed the number, his voice doesn’t have the same echo in the Bunker as it did in the Cave, “he’s getting  _better_. I know how that sounds, but you aren’t here to see it. Well, maybe you’ve got footage or something, but—I’m proud of how he’s done the last few nights. He’s really stood up. I…I didn’t call to  _hurt_  you with this, but I want you to  _know_  I still think this is the right thing to do, okay? I hope you call me soon.”

**

_“You know who this is.”_

_Beep_.

It’s been too long and the fear that maybe, _maybe_ —

Quietly, “I can’t lose anyone else. I…I need you to remember that wherever you are. You have to be careful, don’t die.” The laughter bubbles up abruptly, just an edge of  _hysterics_ , “we’ve been telling you that from day one haven’t we? ‘Don’t be like Jason, don’t  _die_.’ You must be sick of hearing it, but…I—I  _need_ you to keep it in mind, okay? Just, fuck, please,  _please_ don’t  _die_.”

**

_“You know who this is.”_

_Beep_.

Pacing back and forth in the Batsuit while the real thing is just suddenly right on the floor in the middle of the Cave, alive and whole and  _alive_. His thoughts are a tangled mire because he didn’t  _believe_. “Come  _back_. Right now. Why did you  _leave_? Come back, Tim. Come  _back_. Just, _fucking dammit_. Pick up the  _phone_  and _talk to me_.”

Damian is staring at him while Alfred hugs Bruce so tight.

**

_“You know who this is.”_

_Beep_.

Now he’s calling every day while running all the tracing software he can get his hands on. Flight out the night he stopped Ra’s and brought Bruce back from the future. Tracking has lead to a dead end. Too much distance on foot, and no purchases, no utilities, no tech presence, no sign of him in Titan’s Tower, no uses of his pseuds. He’s in the wind somewhere.

“I’m worried you’re more than angry with me. I…I didn’t mean you had to leave the family. That was  _never_  the reason, Tim. It’s not why I made Damian Robin. Please, tell me you  _know_  that.” And the horrible pressure in his chest, the one compounding with each message left unanswered— “Tim, you came to me at Haley’s Circus. We’ve been  _family_  ever since. You  _belong here_. You belong with me and Bruce and Babs and Dami and…and  _please_  just give me  _something_  so I know you’re okay. Anything, Tim—“

**

_The mailbox is currently full. Please try your call again later._

_Click_.

He stares at his phone, back in Nightwing blue.

Robin is suddenly standing too close on the rooftop while Batman watches the dealer across the street.

“You are obviously…disturbed,” the kid observers, “it still bothers you?”

“You know it does,” and  _fuck_  his voice sounds tired, empty.

Robin nods a little while Batman pretends he isn’t listening in. “I…would not have been able to understand even a few months ago. However, I believe I do  _now_.”

He turns to look at the kid with, knowing his expression is more obvious with a domino than a cowl. “Do you?”

Robin nods gently, “you have spent an obscene amount of time trying to teach me to think like criminals to predict their movements. Their perspective. Should I do the same with  _him_  or with you, then yes. I am able to understand why he does not call back and why you are desperate to see him again.”

A shift in the shadows is Batman turning his head slightly toward them at his back. He doesn’t say anything about paying attention to the current stakeout.

**

_The mailbox is currently full. Please try your call again later._

_Click_.

The chatter at the stationhouse is a peripheral.

Last night, Cassie Sandsmark called him, looking for Tim. She sounded worried. Conner Kent sounded more worried.

He buries his face in his hands.

**

_This number has been disconnected. Please check the number and dial again._

He blinks, startled, and a very real fear takes root.

Drabble

Kon—Superboy—is still very much an _optimist_  when it comes to most things. Since his “birth,” he has come to accept certain, reliable truths:

Superheroes throw the most  _banging_ parties (natch)

Algebra will always  _blow_  (sad but true)

Girls are just—wow, fantastic (and boys aren’t so bad either)

Bart really can eat more than Barry (they’ve tested it—twice)

And Robin, ah,  _Tim_ , could seriously take a beating and keep coming back for more

These  _truths_  make him feel more stable, more part of the world around him. He takes them as  _rote_. So maybe, when they left Tim at the Perch, he should have been a little less  _sure_  and been more  _attentive_. It’s not until they’re hour five in trying to locate where N.O.W.H.E.R.E took Bart and figure out why he couldn’t trace the guy by his heartbeat when Gar and Cassie, trying to keep his panicking ass  _calm_ , thinks maybe calling Tim in would be a good idea.

Now  _that_ heartbeat he can hone in on (even though he’d already pretty much refused Dick Grayson’s request to do the same—twice already, dude, seriously,  _no_ , take the hint) and sighs a little when he hears it—a steadily beating staccato.

If he was anyone  _else_ , he would have just said,  _sweet,_  and made yet  _another_  phone call and text attempt (only doing it  _super speed_  and  _not stopping until you answer this time, asshole_ ). Since he’s Superboy, well, the very minute sound right next to that heartbeat has his immediate attention. A metallic  _click_.

It’s a sound he  _knows_ , a sound he’s  _faced down_  and  _fucking laughed right at_. What makes  _this_  particular instance raise his instincts: the sound is inches from Tim’s heartbeat. Even if he was trying to do the vigilante  _scary guy_  thing, no nutjob with a gun would be able to get  _that close_  to the former Robin.

Cassie sees something terrible on his face, sees  _fear_  before he’s  _out_  at the speed of light, closing his eyes while he flies so he can trace the sound over the meaty thud of his own pulse picking up.

And since he’s too into  _what the fuck is going on_ , he gives  _no shits_  about taking out a wall. Really, no big deal, right?

Of all the scenarios he could have imagined (like Tim starting down that road to be like his future, Batman, gun-toting, scary guy self),  _this_  is not at all what he had in mind.

Bile inches up, making him come close to hurling when he  _sees_  and  _realizes_  what almost, could  _still_  happen here. Too many things are coming together in a very fucking scary kind of way.

The shine on the big gun in Tim’s steady hand is just—

Tim wouldn’t be doing this to himself (mind control?), but the guy’s looking at him through the hole in the wall with the same calm, cool look as Robin used to.

Superboy’s fingers twitch on his comm, opening up the line.

“Tim,” and his voice is shaky, “ _Tim_.”

With his hearing, he  _knows_  the line is open in the Tower, everyone together for when they  _do_  find Bart, they can get  _on that shit_. But right here in front of him is something immediate. Kon has never known Tim to back the fuck  _down_.

“Tim, man—“ his hand is shaking when he reaches out, floating in so he’s standing on the battered floor of this shitty apartment in some God-forsaken city. Somewhere not Gotham or San Fran.

“I need you to put the gun  _down_.”

And he hears Cassie gasp over the line, Gar stutter out, “what the  _fuck_  did he _say_?”

Kon’s sees Tim’s hand tighten minutely on the hilt, his thoughts a mess, racing while he tries to  _out-think_  this:

He didn’t heal.

I never should have fucking left him.

I’m going to kick Dick Grayson’s ass. To  **Mars** , you fucker.

I can make it to get the bullet if I have to—probably? Fuck, can I though? Fuck, **Fuck** , I don’t  **know** , I can’t bet his  **life**  on it.

Tim’s expression doesn’t change, doesn’t turn calculating like when he’s planning something  _else_  or he has another contingency. Nope, Kon’s best friend is carrying out the plan he’s  _got_.

Fear forces him to speak, “Please, Tim, _put the gun **down**_.”

And he expects Tim to snap to, like the Robin he used to be. You know, when he knew he was being a fucking  _prick_  about shit. He’d  _realize_  what he’s doing, drop the damn—

“All you need to do is turn around and pretend you were never here.”

Kon jerks back, something in his chest _burning_ ,  _aching_. He comes to a  _sick_ realization, one that makes his eyes  _hot_ and his vision wavy because if he  _hadn’t been listening at this exact moment_ — and still, Tim is pretty fucking set on pulling the trigger.

The comm starts up with Cassie, “ _Goddess_ , Superboy, you can’t let him. Can you  _stop him_?”

In the Tower, she’s still working their main computer, the program Tim developed last year searching out all signs of N.O.W.H.E.R.E’s activity; most of her attention, however, is on the open comm line echoing in the control room.

Raven and Gar are standing close, Raven so  _emotional_ , her aura is practically vibrating. Gar looks grim, eyes toward the ceiling while he listens.

Green eyes widen a little at the idea, “Blue! Tell him we  _need_  his help! Tell him we need his help to find Bart. That’ll give us time to at  _least_  get him back here.”

Blinking, Kon’s mouth starts running slightly before his brain catches up, “Y—You  _can’t_ , N.O.W.H.E.R.E—uh, we’ve got fight them—“ he just starts throwing in whatever he thinks will affect Tim enough to lower the weapon.

“You need…to  _go_  now.”

Desperately, he inserts, “Bart, Tim. They have  _Bart_.”

Cassie’s face crumples a little as she listens, trying to keep herself strong but the broken voice of her former teammate, boyfriend, best friend and she’s ready to jump out the window and fly there as well because she  _cannot_  lose two of them, she _cannot_  lose anyone  _else_.

Kon’s voice over the line: “it’s been  _five hours_ , Tim.  _Five_. You know what they could be doing.”

Cassie’s eyes slide to Gar’s and they wait.

##  V

_Counting bodies like sheep…to the rhythm of the war drums_

The pain is a searing thing, a  _living_  thing. Every cell in his body  _arches_ , trying to get _away_.

There isn’t a time in his life when he can remember being  _trapped_ , unable to  _run_ , to _escape_.

He’s gone beyond terrified. Beyond horrified.

Hope, a fragile thing, dwindling to a dying ember. 

“They can’t find you here.”

“We’ll find out your secrets before you die.”

“Subject 8964.71A—full body scan complete. Dissection beginning.”

“Start recording.”

“Laser scalpel.”

“Get the bio-containers ready. I want these samples preserved as fresh as possible.”

“Heart rate dropping.”

“Get the paddles. We need to keep him alive long enough to get more.”

“Suction! I need to see what I’m doing here.”

“Someone adjust the gag. I can hear him.”

_Whirrllllll_

Eyes wide, every cell on  _fire_  with  _agony_ , his screams are muffled, tears falling onto the metal table under him. The force fields that keep him from being able to  _move_ fast enough, to vibrate out of the restraints, to make them  _stop_  the ripping, tearing, cutting into his viscera and raw meat, to wipe away his blood like it’s _poison_ —

“Dammit, I need another pair of forceps.”

_Go back to sleep…Go back to sleep_ …

There’s only one kind of sleep for him after this—the permanent one.

And fuck,  _he already died once_.

“WHAT THE HELL?!”

Sounds eek into his consciousness.

Screaming.

People are screaming.

Or is that just him again…?

Eyes flutter, bright, white, hurts his eyes and his head and it was more warm and soothing the first time he let go—

“I’m going to  _fucking kill someone_.”

_Blue?_   _No, hallucinating. Hit the pain threshold._

“Guard the door. I need to crack this force field.”

“Oh my  _God_ … _Bart?_  Bart?! Is he…?”

“He’s alive.  _Go. Guard. The. Door_.”

“Bart…”

“ ** _Now_**.”

Too much, too much—

_Fizzle, caaarrraaack_

And through his battered, broken body—strength pours in. His hands can almost clench. His knee can bend slightly. His muscles, his abdomen, his vital organs, blood and tissue.

“W—Wh-What can you do?”

“I have to sew him up, try to fix the damage before he’s stable to move.” Clinical, precise. “Call the others, let them know we’ve found him. Tell them—don’t hold  _back_. Got it?”

“You  _fucking bet_  I’m telling them.”

And the needle is sliding through his intestines and his throat hurts too much from the hours of screaming. He can’t be dead yet, not with this much searing pain. He can’t be dead, he  _can’t_  be… _can he?_

_I haven’ always done the right thing, the **best**  thing, but I  **tried** , so help me God, I **tried**_.

“Please,” he manages to rasp against the gag.

The wavy light overhead gets dark, a shadow covering up the light and—

_Demon_

“You need to stay calm, Bart. I’m almost done, then we’re getting you the hell out of here. As is, your metabolism is speeding up your healing now that the force field has been deactivated. Just  _stay with me_.”

The thick terrycloth is wrenched abruptly out of his mouth, “R-R…” hoarse and hardly recognizable as language.

“I’m not that guy anymore, okay? But yeah, it’s me. I have to keep you in restraints so I can do this, but we’re here. Just stay still for another four minutes, thirty-eight seconds.”

He tries to speak again, but—nothing is coming out, nothing but weak sobs, tears still leaking down his face because it  _can’t_ be. He  _left the Titans_ , he isn’t  _coming back_ , this is a hallucination to help him deal with the  _pain_.

_Click_.

Bare hands without gloves, arm under his shoulder, under his knee. He’s laying against a shoulder, his face pressed into a neck—one that should smell like Kevlar and whatever crap used to make those smoke pellets.

Insanely, he starts laughing when movement starts, long strides making the crazy whorls of light jump and dance around him because his  _fucking brain_ doing this  _shit_  to him, giving him this to keep him from going crazy in his last lucid minutes before—

It’s all over again.

_I’m sorry Barry—I couldn’t **be**  what you  **needed**._

_Wally, Wally please keep moving—please don’t **stop**_

_Connor, I’m sorry I never told you how much your friendship, how much **you** mean, fuck being a clone, you’re  **you**_

_Tim…never should have let you leave you stupid fucker_

_I’ll never get to have—_

“Take him. I’ve got a surprise to leave.”

“What the fuck are you—?”

“Do it. Get him to Raven on the plane.”

His body is jostled, causing a cry to be wrenched from his damaged throat, but different arms, different neck, and weightlessness of flying…

“Hold on, B. Hold  _on_ , man. I’m right here. _I’m right fucking here, okay?_ ”

“N—No…not…ha-hallucinat…can’t be…can’t find me….here.”

“We found you,” and that is Kon’s voice in his hair, close to his ear because the wind is rushing by them and it’s so  _loud_. “Bart, we found you, man. I’ve  _got you_.”

And he laughs again just as the explosion behind them lights up the night.


	3. VI, VI.V, VII, VII.V, VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> VI: "No one is waiting on me."  
> Drabble, The Red Hood: I would make the same fucking choices all over again.  
> VII: Losing Robin ended it. Ended them.  
> Drabble, The Last Titan Standing: Sometimes it’s nice to wrong about shit; sometimes, it feels like a noose around his neck.  
> VIII:Tim deleted Dick’s message and hasn’t listen to another since.

## VI

_I don’t need you to save me_

_I don’t need you to cure me_

The night is a vortex, eating the streetlight with feral  _intent_.

On the ledge, he leaves a blood stain, proof he’s  _alive_.

_I don’t need your antidote for I am my disease_.

Running. Leaping. Snarling. Fists are sore inside the gloves, knuckles bruised and old cuts bandaged with the scabs tearing off under the onslaught.

He  _is_ a shadow, staying off camera, adapting a dark suit in the colors of despair.

_I don’t need you to free me_  
_I don’t need you to help me_

Trying to change was a useless endeavor. Too many things are in his blood now, too many things he can’t just leave  _behind_. It’s fine. He’s been the one left standing enough times to  _adapt_.

_I don’t need you to lead me through the light_

It’s becoming  _rote_  again, put on the suit, strafe out the window, take to the rooftops,  _fight_. Keep fighting. Keep moving. Can’t stop. It’s not in him to stop—momentary lapses in judgement notwithstanding.

_‘Cause I am a survivor_

_I am a fighter_

And this city  _breathes_  around him, battered and beaten, broken with glass shards sharp in the creases of sidewalks and brick. No gargoyles, not many places to  _hide_ , it’s a city with a  _need_ , a city floundering in darkness and fear.

He can relate.

_I will fall and rise above  
And in your hate I find love_

In the whispers, in the cells where the evil rest their heads, he has a name to them because no one on the outside  _believes_. He doesn’t use the same tactics, doesn’t use the same tools or the old trade. He’s had to bring something new to the table, and it gets him more thrashed by dawn but the pain is a constant companion anyway. No way to change it—a life lesson on what sacrifice gets you, but still, here he is, clinging to the fire escape, waiting for the right moment to jump.

_I will not fall from grace_  
I'll walk into the fire, baby  
He’s fielded enough searches, ducked his head at the right moments to avoid the inevitable. It’s necessary.

He doesn’t plan on staying here forever anyway. It’ll be time to move on soon, move to the next city, the next sections of darkness where the light struggles to thrive. The light has to have a chance and if nothing else, he can give it that.

_All my life_  
I was afraid to die  
And now I come alive inside these flames  
He leaves them bruised and bloody, crouching a few feet away from their victim. She’s shaking, mascara smeared from crying. Slowly, he picks up her discarded phone, dials 911 and hits “Send” before tossing it at her. Her shirt it torn but he made it in time to stop the terrible. It’s worth the swollen knee and pain in his kidney.

The operator is asking for the nature of the emergency by the time he’s made a half-assed leap to the fire escape and starts the climb up to join the starts glittering in the night.

**

In less than a month, he’s on a greyhound, staring out into the passing scenery, his hoodie pulled around him like a shield. By now, Dick Grayson may already be in the hole-in-the-wall he’d been “living in” to search for clues or some immutable proof Tim Drake is alive.  It’s a practice in futility. Choices have been made and sometimes there isn’t a way to go  _back_.

_You don't want me to love you_  
You don't want me to need you  
You don't want to look at me for you will turn to stone

The screen of his phone lights up his features in stark, cutting lines while he idly skims the articles in between watching the night: Wayne Enterprises updates (the return of Bruce Wayne as CEO—a blurb wondering what happened to the rising young mogul, not enough to be concerning), the Justice League’s latest newsworthy fights (on world escalations on the East Coast from one of the supervillain groups that just  _suddenly_  had issues—Brainiac is such a douche, seriously, but his coding is so pathetically  _simple_  to break), the Titans taking on several new members (BB and Cassie are  _smiling_  with the guy named Bunker—it’s good they can still move too), and the criminal population in Gotham seeming to move  _out_  rather than  _in_  thanks to the efforts of her vigilantes.

Even through Chevell’s  _Forfeit_  ( _I want to fight, I want to **fight**_ ), he hears the chuffing across the aisle, only his eyes sliding over—and meets the endless blue staring at him from under a battered hat pulled low.   The stranger doesn’t bother to hide his intense scrutiny when he turns his head to meet that gaze head on, the music blaring in one ear.

_I don’t need you to free me_

_I don’t need you to help me_

Gentle vibrations of the bus rolling along, sounds of snoring and sighs with sleep, the two hold gazes as if the distances is  _miles_.

“Running away, ain’t cha, kid?” Matches Malone observes in a low, rolling bass—one that is reminiscent, that rolls up his spine and triggers his synapsis to fire up, to try for those old, broken links. “I seen the like.”

He blinks once, fist suddenly clenched by his side, pulling at the cuts and bruises.

The shoddy coat moves more than the man when he sits up, leans closer like he’s ready to tell the secrets of the universe. “Why don’t cha just go  _home_? Gotta be someone waiting on you.”

_I don’t need you to lead me through the light_

And in those eyes, he sees below the surface, like he’s always been able to. Even back in the days before he  _earned_  the  _right_  to call himself one of them. But nothing in those eyes changes a damn thing, does it? Choices are already  _made_.

“No one is waiting on me,” he finally replies in a voice that sounds rusty and half hoarse from lack of use.

_‘Cause I am a survivor_

_I am a fighter_

The persona slips for just a heartbeat, could have been imagined really.

“Don’t believe that for a second.” And Matches leans just that much closer, “a kid like you? You gots a place somewhere.”

And in his mind’s eyes, he sees the old house go up in flames, the supports finally giving way under his childhood room to put the whole thing on the ground, out of its misery. The finale on endlessly silent rooms, artifacts long donated to museums, his old footsteps ashes and soot to be blown away, the memory of his life to whirl somewhere in the stratosphere.

And like Jason said, he finally knows where his place I at—he  _gets it_. So the sad laughter bubbling up from his chest is just no surprise, but the next sentence really isn’t either. “I don’t. Probably never did. It’s my own fault.”

_I will fall and rise above  
And in your hate I find love_

And Matches pauses, assessing those words with a downturn of his mouth pulling the haze of stubble across his cheeks. This time, the fist clenching from under the coat sleeve is the move from another person, another  _life_.

“T— _Kid_ —”

“It’s fine,” he sounds less like ground glass. “I understand now, so it’s okay.”

“Maybe… maybe you oughta make  _sure_ , ya know? Shit happens in families alla time.”

“I don’t have any family,” he cuts  _that_  thought off. “Like I said, no one is waiting for me.” He turns back to the window, to the  _night_ , and it soothes, whispers, conceals.

“Still think yer wrong,” and the voice is less Matches now, more someone  _else_  that used to—

He says nothing in return, not until the next stop when the bus finally rolls to a stop and the driver gets out to stretch his legs. Matches Malone stands in his ratty coat and dirty blue pants.  He looks down at the young man staring out the window, who doesn’t bother to look over.

“Whatever it is they did ta ya, it ain’t worth this,” he says softly, aware of the other riders starting to wake up with the promise of a stop during the trip. “Whatever they did, they might be sorry, might wanta tell ya ta ya face. Maybe they want yous back.”

And the charade is tiresome, irritating because  _Jason_  is the only one that had the fucking balls to tell it like it  _is_. “I served my purpose,” and maybe it’s more bitter than he intends.

The heat of those eyes still doesn’t make him turn, but he spots the gleam of a car through the night, parked back away from the lights of the depot. Someone is leaning against the rear quarter panel, arms crossed over his chest, and dark hair in a snarling mess. The previous theory at the start of the trip was incorrect.

“You could come with me,” drifts over his hunched shoulders, the game apparently at an end. “You can get your things and walk off this bus right now.” It’s Bruce’s voice now, his clipped, high society Gotham speech, “Your room is waiting for you at home when you want it—“

Dick is looking at the bus through the night, straightening.

“There’s no home for dead birds,” he replies quietly, slouching deeper in his seat. “Nice talking to you, but you should go. Someone’s here for you.”

A beat of silence, of the man behind him thinking, reasoning, rationalizing, trying to put things together from the bits of conversation, “I want you  _back_. So does he.”

And finally Tim Drake turns in his seat, eyes bleary with lack of sleep, “you never had me.” Painful but true because he was never  _chosen_  was he?

Under the skin of Matches, Bruce flinches, breathes, his eyes widen at the sincerity, the  _certainty_. And even if his instincts scream against it, he turns away, turns to  _leave_.

The bus starts up again, the driver still sipping on a cup of hot coffee, and the thing lumbers out in a rolling rhythm to delve deeper into the night.

With hope faded at the lone passenger disembarking, Dick closes his eyes and lowers his head in defeat.

  

## 6.5 No Home for Dead Birds Drabble—the Red Hood

_I am done pretending_

_You have failed to find what’s left_

Break time, you feel me? Kory and Roy always got my fucking  _back_ , no matter the sitch, but sometimes, in our line of work, ya gotta go take care of  _personal_ business. For Kory, it’s dealing with her cunt  _bitch_  of a sister, and _, goddammit_ , she wouldn’t let me  _come and play_  for shit’s sake, and  _believe it_ , I made the argument for shutting her the hell up with a Glock.45 enema.

No dice.

Roy is making his sabbatical to the Navajo reservation whats where he started with the bow before Ollie took him in and became a cocksucking little rat, turnin’ his back on his own  _ward_ , one that  _bled_  and fought the good fight with ‘im. Lotsa those judgmental fuckers used ta wonder why Roy turned to the junk since he was  _so lucky_  being taken in and all.

Well, all of ‘em can sit on it and  _fucking_  spin.

Point it, when Roy gets too in his own world of  _fucked_  and  _up_ , when he’s fighting those old demons like I fight the Pit and Kory fights the slavers, he takes off for a while without a word ‘cause really, he’s an asshole sometimes. Still calls me ‘Jaybird,’ too, the dick.

He ain’t been the same since Lian, since he took ‘Arsenal’ back.

Kory worries like hell, but she don’t push too hard—don’t want to see him break wide the fuck open. Even though we both know it’s inevitable. The  _waiting_  for it, now that’s the real bitch.

And since we’re calling a break, and neither of ‘em let me tag along—well, an’ I sure as hell ain’t going back to the desert and Talia (fuck  _her_  and Ra’s too) it’s time to go home and maybe,  _maybe_  get a chance to do some  _good_.

 

_Some are not worth saving_

_You are such a pretty mess_

And say whatchu want about Gotham, she’s the classiest whore a fifty can get ya. Sparkly and bright in all the right places; dark and deep with scars and trash, with  _knowledge_  everyone  _wants—_  if you know what to  _ask for_  and  _where_  to lookit.

Walking through the Narrows is like stepping back in  _time_ , back before the  _Bat_  and his spew of bullshit tryin’ to make things  _better_ , to make sure the right people  _paid_  for what they done.

S’not like the Joker really paid a  _price_  for his crimes, right Bruce? Eat. Shit. Motherfucker.

_Now you want to take me down_

_I am the monster in your head_

Last time I was back, I had a little  _talk_  with Replacement. Had to give him his fucking  _due_ , yeah? ‘Cause what that smart-ass never  _understood_  is how  _stupid_  he was to take the cape in the first place. His mistake, and we all gotta pay the Piper when it comes time. Kid needed to  _understand_  that shit. He needed to  _get it_. When it comes to the life, the Bat, the cape, the R on yer chest like a mother _fucking_   _target_ , ain’t nothing for free—it all comes with a  _price_.

Dickie understands it, even if he’s too fucking chicken-shit to admit it ‘cause he’s so afraid of hurting Bruce’s feelings. Bruce whats got us all into his personal crusade without giving out alla deets. That motherfucker didn’t learn until Timmy stepped up to take it—that maybe he ought to pull out a consent contract and shit, make sure a bunch of fucking  _children_  knew what they was getting themselves into. That dumbass kid shoulda said  _no thanks_. Lookit where he ended up. That’s all the proof Mr. Detective needs to see how it really goes in the vigilante game. Best thing I ever  _did_  for ‘im was tell him how it was all gonna end—them tossing him aside like some kind of goddamned  _garbage_ , like he goes in the fucking gutter.

Did he listen?

Hell no. Well, Baby Bird, guess you see how right ole’ Jason was after all. I ain’t just crazy as shit. The Pit ain’t on me alla time, just enough to make a good fight that much  _better_.

Well, after our little  _talk_ , he ain’t coming back anyhow.

Nah, truth is, even knowing what I know  _now_ , crazy or  _not_ —“there is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand,” Mary Shelley,  _Frankeinstien_ , the creature, you assholes, not the doc—I would make the same fucking choices all over again. I’d still try to get the goddamned tire off that car, still try to brain that scary bastard, still take ‘im up on his offer, still let Alf teach me to cook and mind my P’s and Q’s. I’d still be the good soldier and try to make shit right, just like him.

It ain’t often I’ll admit it, so keep that shit to yourselves.

_I am suffocating_

_You have failed to pull me in_

And that’s why I’m here, in the rancid bowels, punching the  _shit_  outta some gang bangers with a taste for steel and some pathetic skill. It’s why I tried to rule the underworld of the city; to keep the crime in  _control_  since Bats ain’t never gonna get how it really is. You ain’t gonna stop crime, no matter how many toys and how many little kids you throw in a cape and how scary you make yourself; crime is always gonna be in the shadowy niche, spreading like a fucking  _disease_ , choking out the light.

Whats doing is trying to keep it  _contained_. You run the underworld, you control how seedy it gets. That’s just common fucking sense, and’s why I took up the Red Hood, not that anyone’s ever gotta know. Shit, not like anyone’s ever gonna  _believe_.

 

_I will drag you down again  
Life is unrelenting_

And the old injuries start achin’ after it’s all said an’ done—all those places what met a crowbar. When they’re lying in a heap of hurt motherfuckers, breathing but gonna be sore as hell in the morning, I know I did what needed to be done. Same feeling I used to get back in the cape.

But musta wore out my welcome ‘cause the old shadows start getting  _sharp_  and the feeling of being watched just crawls all over.

 

_And I thought you’d learn by now_

_It seems you haven’t yet_

_I am the venom in your skin_

“Might as well come down, asshole.”

And he does, leaps right off the dark corner, comes down to street level perched on a dumpster.

Golden Boy, the  _chosen one_. Nightwing is still hanging around the city even though Bats is back to his old uniform. It’s a fucking head trip to see him after he won the cowl ‘cause, you know, we were trying to do the same damn thing for what we both thought were the right reasons. Only difference—Dickie never wanted it, and it’s alls I ever did.

“Go ahead and check ‘em, fucker. Still breathing.”

“Not here for that.”

Laughing in the helmet always sounds weird as shit with the synths. “Ya ain’t up for recommendation in the Dead Robins Club. Nah, that’s me and that asshole little Demon  _only_ , you feel me?”

Once upon a fucking time, Dick Grayson was the reason I worked my ass off to be Robin. And I don’t give a shit what anyone says, street kids all looked up to him—a guy our age going out and fucking up dirty criminals, doing something  _right_ , getting the Bat to pick  _him_  out of anyone else.

Shit. It’s been a long time for those shitty fairytales to cease, yeah?

“I’m looking for Red Robin,” and there it is, that big brother bullshit he still tries to pull. That  _oh, I’m so worried about you, Jason. We still love you and shit, come the fuck back to the Bats_. Uh-hu, like he thinks I crawled outta my grave  _yesterday_.

“Pretender, huh?” I drawls it out, take my steps around bodies, fondling my .45s just to see him tense up, get  _ready_  for a fight. “Worried about the little bird you threw out, Big Wing?”

 

_I am suffocating_

_You’ve failed to pull me in_

“That’s  _not_  what happened,” and ohhh. Touched a  _nerve_  there, did I?

“Who the fuck are you  _kidding?”_  And this, this is going to make my night right here. Better than the ass-beating I just handed out. “That little motherfucker is the  _smart one_. You think he don’t know the score?”

“At the time—“

“You put another kid in  _his_  cape, Big Wing. What’chu think he needed? A written  _invitation_  to get the hell out _?_ ”

And if I was a better man, I might feel  _sorry_  for him. ‘Cause alls he’s doing is denying the fucking  _facts_ —Pretender wasn’t  _too old_  or ready to move on his own steam. Nah. Dickie just punched his vigilante time card on the  _out_.

“I  _told_  him I  _needed him_ ,” and there’s the defenses. Learned from the best because the Bat has some good bullshit too. “I couldn’t mentor a Robin that was my  _equal_. I thought he  _understood_  that!”

And I have to shake my head at how fucking  _stupid_  he sounds, trying to justify it all, taking my  _time_  to ease up on ole’ Big Wing, get up to make this a little more  _close_  and  _personal_.

“Bull. Shit.”

And yeah, I can hear his teeth grinding. Poor Dickie.

“Alls you managed to do was just push him out of the city, Big Wing. Why keep a  _defective_  Robin, a Robin what wasn’t  _chosen_ , when you’s got the blood son all ready and raring to go? An’ I seen that fucking little Demon. I bet he  _helped_  you do it, yeah? Bet he was riiiight there with you saying it, too.  _Out with the old, in with the new. Since you ain’t got the cape, maybe you’s should just hit the fucking road. Make some **room**  for the next in line_. Oh, oh, and I  _heard_  you thought he was fucking  _crazy_  when he thought B was still alive. That true, too? That how you show your  _equal_  he’s still gotta place in the ranks? Well,  _shit_ , not like you didn’t  _apologize_  after he really proved B’s alive,  _yeah_?”

 

_I will drag you down again_

_Life is unrelenting_

Oh, Dickie’s not looking so good now—maybe I hurt his feelings, maybe I threw him back to when B took the cape from  _him_  ‘cause now he’s all pent-up energy, vibrating like he might explode.

Little more gas on the fire, let’s see how much he can  _take_.

“’Cause I mean, at least B waited to replace me after I  _died_. I sure as  _shit_  didn’t see ‘im put on  _my_  cape the first time. Naw, that woulda been fucking  _cruel_.” Ah, there. That flinch tells me everything I wanna know. “No  _shit_. You let ‘im  _watch_? Fuck, Big Wing. I never thought you wanted him gone  _that much_. He prob’ly didn’t think so neither.”

“ _You weren’t there_ ,” he finally picks up his balls to come back. Nice. Where’s all that witty banter now, Dick? “You have no idea how it happened! I never—”

“Never what? You never  _meant_  to hurt that smart ass little  _fuck_? I mean, he only lost what?” I count ‘em on my fingers just so’s he  _gets it_. “His real dad, his fake dad, his two  _compadres_ , and who else? His little  _bitch_ , yeah? So’s what did he have  _left_  again? Oh, that’s right. The  _cape_.”

And laughing at ‘im, at the  _look_  on his face. Fucking. Priceless. “But, s’okay, Big Wing. Really. I had a word with him before he jetted outta the city, little broken bird gonna fly away since that’s what everyone  _wants_. He knows he’s just a fucking  _body_  between the good people of Gotham and the crazies. He knows all that “family” bullshit was just a line to keep him fighting. You ain’t gotta worry, he knows where his  _place_ is, always  _has_ been.”

“You  _son of a bitch—“_

“Oh yeah, she  _was_ , Big Wing. What I am don’t change anything. ‘Cause he’s just as  _expendable_ , you  _feel me_? Someone finally had the balls to tell ‘im how it really is.”

The punch is a good one, mostly blocked by the helmet, so’s I feel pretty good getting this much of a rise, bringing out Golden Boy’s  _dark side_.

 

_I am the monster in your head_

_I am the venom in your skin_

It’s a good fight, me an’ him—not like the cowl because, fuck, that shit isn’t in me anymore. Maybe it’s not in Dickie either.

But we take it to the rooftops, keep it away from street-level, keep it away from the Bat’s usual just ‘cause neither of us want him in on  _this_.

And it mighta been comin’ for a while. Maybe since I can’t be with Kory or Roy, maybe I  _do_  feel some kind of bad for Pretender and all the fucking branches he hit on the way down the tree, or maybe I still got issues with Dickie—too many from waaay back in the day. Moot point. We take it outta each other in  _spades_.

I don’t need to yuck it up in this fight. Already said my piece long before the .45s and the sticks came out to play and we’re trading blows like you’d trade beans in the backroom. Dickie’s all gloom and doom, the  _Bat_ , but he ain’t got the ice for it tonight. Too much fire under there. That just means I take an epic ass-kicking since his green scaly panties are all twisted up being faced with the  _truth_. It’s fucking bitter, yeah?

But something I learned what after I came back. Something Dickie apparently  _didn’t_ : you can outrun everything but the demon on your back. Those bastards, they gots  _teeth_.

And he pins me but good alla way down at the Wallstone, right on the edge of the roof. That fist drawn back, covered in blood, and we’re both panting like hell. There’s where he needs  _it_  the most.

“You can kick my ass all over town, Dick, but it don’t change anything.” And I laugh because he had no fucking  _clue_ —Big Wing never stood a chance in this fight, naw, I always had the final call.

“He ain’t gonna come  _back_  and sure as  _fuck_  not for you.”

It’s the most satisfying  _lights-out_  I’ve ever got.

_I am the monster in your head_.

## NHDB 7

Once upon a time, he was part of something  _bigger_.

Sometimes he forgets how good it was, Bart and Kon right  _there_  after a big fight, patching his human ass up, finding catches in the utility belt, working around the security—

Because  _skin_  was the ultimate goal.

The three of them kept it on the down-low, away from the others, away from the mentors, diverting the World’s Greatest Detective away from the realization. They hadn’t wanted it to become a  _problem_  in the eyes of the JLA; something that could have the potential to ruin the team effort or circumvent the point of resurrecting The Titans. Bart always bitched about the double-standard, Clark and Di could fuck whenever  _they_  wanted to. Kon had just rolled with the punches, only forgetting when worry for one of them overrode the need for secrecy. Tim, well, Tim had enjoyed giving and receiving attention, affection, comradery, everything that came with their mutually beneficial arrangement. Those two are his best friends; really, there was never a  _reason_  they couldn’t be lovers along with fighters. Each of them knew how to handle both sides of the  _life_.

Initially, when he wanted to get serious with Dick, they  _understood_ , supported him, and reverted back to his best friends without a hitch. They let him be monogamous, careful not to overstay their welcome in the Perch when Dick came to the Tower. 

Losing Robin ended it. Ended  _them_.

In the same way it ended any possibilities between him, Kon, and Bart. After the hard choices had been made and the consequences dealt out—Tim wouldn’t share anyone’s bed again—Bart and Kon by circumstances; Dick by choice.

And part of those consequences: without a cape, he couldn’t be a Titan. Without Batman backing him, the JLA was lost. Clark looked hesitant, Diana refused to meet his eyes (Jason never had to deal with this shit), Arthur just twirled his trident and nodded when they dropped the news literally the night after he left Gotham when Dami came out in the new and improved Robin uniform. Barry—Barry was the only one that pointedly looked at him and shook his head, disagreeing.

“So—“

“I’m sorry, Tim,” is Clark’s only response.

“I have another pseud.” Did they think the new tunic is for  _show_?

“It’s not because of  _you_ ,” Diana goes on.

_It’s not you, you’re just not Robin_.  _But—_

“I’m sorry,” Clark says again, like it actually makes things  _better_.

 

“I get it,” and his voice has gone quiet, dangerous, making Clark straighten and Diana’s shoulder tighten. The Batman’s protégé, just another good soldier, tossed aside like a rancid meat bag (“You coulda been  _my_  Robin. You coulda kept your cape and your city and your  _place_. No one would have taken if from you. I wouldn’ta let that shit happen, you feel me?” Yeah? Well, fuck you, Jason. This is still preferable to being under your thumb).

“We’ve decided agree to Batman’s request and give the… _new_  Robin a chance with the team, see how he’s going to do,” and Vic sounds remotely uncomfortable.

“In light of that, it wouldn’t be a good idea to have you  _both_  on the team,” Clark is aware of their history, the blood and bashing. They don’t want conflict in The Titans.  _Out with the old_. “Tim—“

He turns his back, the cape and cowl still strange at this juncture. No more wind in his hair. The harness is too loose, meant for Jason, the utility belt has a busted compartment in the back.

“Decision made then,” he says to the door just as he starts moving toward it.

“You could be a consultant,” Arthur calls out, trying to be helpful, to give some  _options_. “You’re smart, Tim, always have been.”

He stops cold. Tim Drake, the one he is quickly  _becoming_ , is carefully controlled when he’s reached the limit; however, his strike-back is something to  _remember_. The urge is there because: a  _consultant_. To the new Robin. To the team he used to lead.

A reply would be insulting—to him and the Titans—so he just keeps on walking, leaving Titan’s Tower ( _home_ ) where they’d ambushed him with a verbal eviction notice. He didn’t look back as the plane rose out of the roof access. The Red Robin is just a mask he’s going to wear for the moment, just long enough to find Bruce, redeem himself, and then he’s going to tell the rest of the superhero community to  _get fucked_.

**

After the greyhound incident, he’s in another anonymous city, finding the shadows, digging into the deep darkness with both hands, clawing, straining against the spread. Fighting it with teeth and bone.

The hovering always gets on his nerves. Always.

Looking down from his perch, waiting for the bumbling assholes to  _finally_  get into the bank and give him something to do, he doesn’t bother giving Superman the benefit of his attention.

“It’s been a while,” the alien tries. “I was hoping you could spare me a few minutes.”

Then  _more_  fumbling to open a window, to shoving each other with the half-assed attempts to get inside; noob criminals aren’t usually  _this_  fun to watch. He does, however, spare an extra few seconds to give an extended pointer finger, showing Clark  _east_.

“Um—?”

“Gotham is that way.” He fills in nonplussed.

“I—yes, Tim, yes it is.”

“Then you should get going. I’m going to have a robbery to stop.” There. Maybe that should make things obvious.

Clark,  _invulnerable_  as he fucking  _is_ , sometimes forgets to slow his reactions down and things flicker too fast to for the regular humans to catch because the alien is blocking his view, his straight line down to the ground. He’s hover slightly low, putting them on the same height. It’s a tactile move since, well, apparently something is brewing in superhero community land.

“I came here to talk to  _you_ , Tim, not Damian.”

“Then you’ve wasted the trip.” His eyes are for around the alien’s arm, watching the progress with more interest than whatever brought Clark here.

“Tim, please, I know you took the thing with the Titans personally—“

_Was there another way to take it?_

“We’re done here.” He interrupts, filling the space between them with the result of disappointment and disillusionment; his childhood favorites have fallen by the wayside, and it all happened so quickly.

He moves to the side, a plain line in one fist, no grapples anymore. Away from the Bat, away from Robin, away from everything that used to be like putting on a worn hoodie, comfortable and familiar.

Clark moves with him, stares up, probably seeing past the domino.

“I understand you’re upset—”

“No, you obviously  _don’t_.” So he leans down, puts himself face-to-face with the Kryptonian, someone he used to  _respect_ , “so I’ll put it together for you. I’m  _out_  of your game. The JLA handed down their edict, and I’ve  _complied_. Anything to do with the Titans, the JLA, the Bats, all of it—I’m  _done_. Don’t come asking for help. Don’t come with my old files. Don’t come asking for a fucking  _consultation_.”

Clark grimaces, realizing  _that_  hit a  _nerve_.

“Tim, Tim  _please_ , I know it sounded like we didn’t—“

“The JLA threw me out of the Titans to keep the peace. So what if Dick kept his team with a new pseud, but I assume that’s what  _happens_  when a Robin gets  _chosen_.” (Read as  _wanted_ ). His voice is flat, removed; still that old pain is  _sharp_ , biting, but it’s started to heal in the last few months. Now, he can look forward without flinching.

Flinching like Clark is doing—right now.

“You and the JLA made that call. Now deal with your own problems.” He threw the line over Clark’s head, side-stepping to jump while Superman hovered in the same spot, wide-eyed.

He doesn’t need a  _cape_. Dark, non-descript clothes, domino, gloves, storage. With Drake Industries still in his back pocket, he could have  _better_ , advanced. He’s not there yet, not where he needs to be. He doesn’t  _want_  to be there yet. Too much Bat. Just sturdy boots, steel-toed. The wind is in his hair again,

He’s not taking out more than run-of-the-mill crazies and criminals. He’s not out-thinking the Joker, taking down Killer Crock, up against the Church of the Blood, or N.O.W.H.E.R.E. He’s not really even pushing himself to keep  _track_  as hard as he should be, not monitoring with the extents he had been a few months ago (well, the JLA could do it themselves now—with Batman  _back_ , they have the manpower).

One laptop, isolated from the Bats. Monitoring only the baddest of the bad. The rest of the small fish are everyone else’s responsibility.

He ties up the would-be bank robbers and hits the alarms on his way  _out_. Sirens will start and the damn day will be saved.

Taking the harder way around, working more of the physical, has helped ease the edges of pain; if anything, he can take the fire escapes faster than ever before.

He’s not outrunning Superman though. That shit is never going to happen—not unless he wants to go to a certain storage locker and pick up the fancy green meteorite.

“You’ve already got your answer,” he doesn’t bother to look back at the following superhero.

“Would it help if I said Dick didn’t send me?” The alien moves a little so he’s in the peripheral rather than right behind.

“I don’t give a fuck  _who_  sent you,” body arches in the leap, cutting through the air, landing in a roll, coming right back to his feet without a hitch. Turn on his heels so he’s facing Clark again, “but apparently I’m not being  _clear_  enough.”

The Man of Steel looks like he’s eaten something bitter.

“I am  _done_  with this shit.  _Done,_ Clark. Fuck the Bats and  _fuck_  the JLA. Handle your  _own_  shit from now on.” Because, yeah, yeah, he is  _done_. Setting up massive redirects to all the JLA’s systems, keeping their inventory updated, keeping their records organized, keeping the Bats funded and—and—

Nope. Not his  _fucking problem_.

The alien is staring down at him with wide eyes, actually  _fidgeting_. “You’re—“ and it’s shocked, quiet— “really  _not_  coming back, are you?”

And Tim sees it there: Dick came back. Jason fucking came back. Damian came back. Well, isn’t he the progressive one all of a sudden?

And Tim (because  _why bother with a name? There’s no one that would use it_ ) just stares behind the domino, amazed at how much Clark thought he could realistically  _take_  before he  _gets it_.

“No,” he finally comes out with, “no. I’m not coming back.”

“…Bruce said he isn’t giving up on you.”

The gloves are still leather, so the sound of his fists tightening is a slight sigh, “he’s the only one. He’ll give it up soon enough.” Because, really, at this point, family is based on blood and choice, isn’t it?

“Conner and Bart—“

“Did what they had to do. We’ve all had to deal with the outcome, and the JLA can do just  _that_.”

“What if—“ Clark hurries.

“No. Like I would come  _back_  just for the JLA to throw me away again? Maybe I just  _assumed_  Dick already told you I’m not fucking  _crazy_.”

“If you come back, the others will too,” the alien tries to placate, to give  _justification_.

But Tim has no  _fucking clue_  what he’s talking about.

Clark apparently thinks he  _does_  and just goes on with more  _authority_ , “Bart and Conner are still in the wind. Cassie Sandsmark hasn’t contacted Diana since she returned the lasso and uniform. We have no idea where Garfield or Rachel are. Titan’s Tower has been abandoned, but if—“

_What now?_

“Why the  _fuck_  is the Tower  _abandoned_?” He spits back, gears churning. If they didn’t get “along” with the new Robin, would their mentors just…kick them out, too?

Apparently  _something_  happened.

Clark stops, staring. “You… Tim, you don’t  _know?_  None of them have come to find you?”

And silence, the unblinking stare behind the domino has Clark looking sheepish, “I—I’m  _sorry_. I thought they may have come to  _you_  and—“

“Why. Did. They.  _Leave_?”  _God, if he had kryptonite right now_ , but the sick bile churning in his gut is all about making some  _plans_. If Clark, Diana, and Wally just threw his friends out the  _fucking door_  like Dick did to  _him_ , then he was going to seriously put the  _contingencies_  into  _play_ —

“They gave up their superhero identities and left the Titans,” Clark admitted low and gave a paranoid glance around, “They… aren’t our sidekicks anymore. It’s—we’re  _worried_  about them, Tim, and I was hoping you might know something or maybe have seen them. Is there anywhere  _not_  out in the open we can talk?”

But, he has the answers he needed. The blanks he can fill in himself.

“I’ve had enough talking,” he starts moving away, processing the new data (they’re all gone now), “go back to your team, Clark.”

“Tim, can I just have—“

“No.” He doesn’t even pause. No need to.  He’s  _out_  of the big leagues, remember?

But Clark doesn’t follow regardless, just stares with something thoughtful in his expression.

**

The JLA’s second try is more underhanded than the first since, you know, they’re a team all about  _results_.

He’s already moved to the next city, comes back with the traces of dawn riding his ass. It doesn’t take a smart guy (just one with an eidetic memory and a history of crime fighting) to realize he hadn’t left the window open. Not even a crack.

From the rooftop across the alley from his current  _habitation_ , he stares into the windows, waiting. The shadows are being replaced so quickly, but—

He sighs, watching the movements around the tiny and ultimately sparse kitchenette; a pot of coffee is fresh, and the choice to get it over with or put up with more  _effort_  next time is the topper of the night.

Ultimately, there shouldn’t be a  _next time_. Not for them. Those choices were taken out of  _his_  hands.

He hits the fire escape gently since he could almost be seen by passersby and opens the window enough to slide in (no more cape, less chance to trip).

Blue eyes look up from the ratty table, hands clenched around the fresh cup of coffee—so tight his knuckles are  _white_. And it is Dick Grayson, not Nightwing, not Batman, not the acrobat, not the ward, not the cop.

He looks like he hasn’t slept in days.

They should have a sleep deprivation anonymous meeting, seriously.

And it’s a crazy thing, the two of them standing a few feet apart, silently staring at one another—a vigilante and a “civilian.” A quick mask change would alter the dynamic, bring them back to a place that had  _years_  to grow. All that history, worthless.  _Lies_.

Long moment of silence when Dick finally realizes Tim isn’t saying  _anything_.

“Hi,” the older chokes out, “I—I  _called_  so many times and... I was just—I was  _worried_ , Tim, so, ah, here I am.”

And it’s really a  _talent_  to get the eyes of a face mask to narrow, but once you’ve worn one for so many years, it really does become habit.

“Worried,” he repeats dully.

“Yes! Did you…get any of my messages?” And Dick’s eyes are so,  _so_  blue. That intense color when he right on the cusp of an incredible orgasm—

“There’s nothing left to say,” should answer just about everything, including the  _am I welcome in Timmy’s squatter’s nest?_  No, Dick, you aren’t. Hopefully, the older man feels just about as comfortable here and Tim has come to feel in Wayne Manor, in Wayne Tower, in the Cave, in _Gotham_. (No home for dead birds, right?)

_I used to lay naked with this man. I used to put my weaknesses and vulnerabilities in his fucking **hands**_.

“Tim,” and Dick breathes it out like his strength is giving way, like he can see the thoughts churning.

“You should go,” he turns his back, going to the single bedroom to get out of the clothes. “There’s nothing for you here.”

The sound of the chair scraping doesn’t stop him, the footsteps running. He waits long enough to dodge out of the way, circumventing Dick’s  _surprise hug_  maneuver (one that  _used to_  work when he just stood in place and let it happen). The older of the two is devastated by the denial, but that’s just  _Dick_. His idea of fixing this shit is to try piecing the broken bits together with old feelings (and  _did he ever really…?_  Is what Tim can  _see_  now that he’s been gone for a while) like that shitty paste from kindergarten. Dick is going to try smothering him with hugs and affection, like Tim is every going to believe any of that shit was  _real_.

“You have to listen to me,” low and urgent, the two of them facing off in the dimly lit hallway, pressing back against paper thin tenement walls.

“How fucking difficult is it to  _understand_ , Dick? We have  ** _nothing_**  to talk about. You have Nightwing, Bruce is the Bat, and he has a Robin. The Titans are apparently in the wind, but at least there’s a Robin there for the next generation. That’s it. I’ve nothing else to give.” He counters calmly, priding himself on  _not_  letting the urge to punch Dick in the face take over.

“None of it,  _none of it_  gave you the excuse to leave the family!” Dick snaps back, “you just—you just!”

“Fuck. You.” Tim pulls the domino away, so the reality is right in front of Dick’s face. “Fuck  _you_ , Dick.  _I_  left the family. Sure. You want to think that? No problem. Whatever helps you  _sleep_  at night.”

“I didn’t come here to fight.”

“You shouldn’t have come here at all.”

“ _Tim_ , I still  _care_ —“

“This,  _this right now_ , isn’t happening. You wanted to JLA to shut me out of the Titans, done. You let Damian push me out of the Manor and the Cave,  _done_.  You wanted the  _right_  Robin, the blooded one?  _Done_. You got  _what you fucking wanted._ I’m out of Gotham, so you can go the fuck back to your family.”

Mouth working without sound, Dick is just blinking at him.

Quietly, Tim takes enough of a step to put them closer, “you really didn’t think I wouldn’t figure it out after all this? Where my place is, always has been. It’s  _fine_ , you know. Now that I  _get it_. You didn’t have to lower yourself to  _fucking me_  just to keep me in place until the next Robin came along. That…that was a  _shitty_  thing to do.”

“No, Timmy, no, no, no, that’s not—that was  ** _never why_** —“ Dick’s hands are just wrapping around his biceps, squeezing hard enough that the bruises are going to be good ones, deep purple and blue.

But,  _no_. He doesn’t have  _that right anymore_ , and Tim just pulls out an old memory, dusts it off a little, and steps away from the boy Dick Grayson had known. Faster than he was a year ago, Tim gives a good one in the bad knee and wrenches away at the same time, taking a few more steps down the hall while Dick gives a harsh breath out, backs off.

Tim lets out a shaky breath himself. “I’m not going back. Whatever you think you need me for, there are others. Ask one of them. Babs or Damian or the JLA. Leave me the hell out of it.”

Dick swallows, staring at him, and that crushed look on his face could be  _real_. “Tim… I didn’t sleep with you because I wanted to keep you in the family. You  _have_  to believe that. I didn’t take advantage of you that way—I  _wouldn’t_.”

“I’ve said all I’m going to,” because he’s  _done_  with this. Done with Dick, done with the Bats, done with  _their world_. Damian can fucking  _have it_.

“Tell me what I have to do to make you believe me,” Dick counters. “None of it, all the  _years_  we’ve been partners, friends, brothers. All of that was real, Tim. It’s  _still_ real. I wouldn’t be here if I just wanted some  _kid_  in the uniform.”

Tim just stands, stares with narrowed eyes, hands working at his sides, ready to go toe-to-toe if that’s what has to happen here.

“I’m not leaving until you answer me.”

After a moment of staring at Dick’s face, of the  _pain_ , the old hurt, Tim Drake breathes out and his body relaxes, his expression smooths out into neutral lines. “Two years ago, I would have believed you,” and his voice is so quiet, wobbly, “back then if you would have  _talked_  to me, treated me like—“ and he falters, blinking away from Dick’s face. “I—there is no reason to go back. I’m not  _that_  Tim Drake anymore. I have nothing left to give you, any of you. Dick, I…I fulfilled my role as Robin; I  _saved_  Batman from himself. I helped a shit-ton of people, but I can’t go  _back_. There’s nothing for me to go back  _to_.” He closes his eyes against the terrible expression on Dick’s face, “I have nowhere to go but forward.”

And Tim’s  _that’s how it is now_  just breaks something in Dick Grayson, the older man staring at his former brother, friend, lover, and bites the inside of his cheek when his eyes get hot. He slowly steps closer, slowly,  _so slowly_  moves enough that he’s in arm’s reach, forcing himself not to flinch at the emptiness, the old and bitter failures between them.

“Let me—“ he has to swallow down the self-recriminations, the ones making his voice break, “let me stay with you for a while. Just—Just let me  _stay_ —“

“Out of the question.” His answer is immediate, no give, not anymore.

Dick is just staring at him, heartbroken. Everything,  _everything_  is so broken…

Tim turns, weirded out by the staring, the Bat stillness. He closes his bedroom door, making the change fast, waiting, hoping Dick will just  _leave_  because  _fuck_  it does still  _hurt_.

“I’m not giving up on you,” Dick calls through the door. “You can’t make me, Tim.”

Pulling the nerd t-shirt over his head, the words strike him right where the old wounds  _bleed_.

Dick jerks a little when the door is wrenched open, Tim’s eyes darker than he’s ever seen them, lined with secrets—

“You gave up on me two years ago, Dick. I think you’re a little late with this shit  _now_.”

And dammit, he can see it. Every line in Tim’s body, the carefully neutral expression on his face. Jason’s words haunt him again  _“he ain’t gonna come back. Not for **you**.”_

Dick Grayson fears Jason might have been right.

**

Tim opens the window and Dick steps out onto the ratty fire escape, turns back to try one last time, but the window is shut in his face. The blind draws down, leaving him cold.

It’s for the best. Tim Drake, the one they all used to know, is a guy left behind in the gutters of Gotham City; that vigilante got the shit kicked out of him for the last time. Hemorrhaging is a terrible way to go.

When the present-day Tim turns around after Dick takes the fire escape down, he blinks, stills. Sitting on the nasty, musty couch, Conner Kent and Bart Allen are looking back at him with soft puppy eyes; both teenagers happy to see him still moving, still  _alive_.

“Hey,” Bart calls gently with a wave. He’s in a t-shirt and khakis, his mass of hair longer than the last time.

Conner, white shirt, jeans, work boots, is grinning wide and white, “hope it’s cool if we crash with you, man. We need to have a little talk.”

## 7.5 No Home for Dead Birds Drabble: Last Titan Standing

“Why the  _fuck_  weren’t we consulted about this?”

That’s the thing about the superhero community; when they start up with the group mentality, those  _teams_  tended to earn these things like  _loyalty_. That happens when you continually risk your ass for that  _stupid_  motherfucker that just risks his or her own in retaliation.

It’s a good thing, for teams to have each other’s backs—unless the dissention in the ranks comes from the  _outside_.

That said, the current Kid Flash, Bart Allen, has had just about  _enough_  of this  _fuckery_.

Sure, he enjoys being on the team,  _enjoys_  having the name Kid Flash, but he’s already  _thinking_  about the Impulse suit put away in the place ( _his place_ ) Max (before he  _vanished_ ) set-up for him outside of the JLA and  _away_  from Wally (per his own request Bart had to find out later). Jay and Joan knew he had a place  _somewhere_ , but the two never really asked for any details, just respected when he needed his space. When Deathstroke took out his knee, he hadn’t thought the KF suit would be there, hovering in his peripheral.

Sometimes it’s nice to wrong about shit; sometimes, it feels like a noose around his neck.

Gar looks vaguely in  _shock_. Raven, beside him is even more still—first indication of  _not good_  from the senior members (well, both had been through the generations of  _Robins_  and what’s happening now? It’s a first and  _not_  in the good way).

Frowning, Diana glances at Clark before laying it out, “we had a valid reason for all of this.”

“You didn’t  _ask_ ,” Kon interrupts again, emphasizing the  _main point_. His eyes are narrow and muscles tight, looking a  _lot_  like he might be in the  _beat shit to a pulp_  kind of mood. “You kicked him out of the Tower without consulting  _any of us_. Like we don’t have a say in  _our own_ team. Anyone want to explain that part of it?”

“Conner,” Clark holds up both hand, trying to calm the volatile situation (the worst for him really, these aren’t things that need super anything but patience), “you’re right. We should have consulted the team, but it was hard enough to tell him—did all of you really want to be here when we did?”

“You bet your  _ass_  I would have. That guy is my best  _friend_.”

“How can you even  _ask_  that?”

“Oh? So the JLA has the right to make  _that_  call?”

“Clark, really dude, what do you  _think?_ ”

“You conclusion is  _unacceptable_.”

The five young adults are on their feet, talking at once.

Wally shakes his head a little—he was the deciding vote at the time and he went with it because it was  _Dick_  asking. The guy worn the hell out, trying to make all the right decisions for the right  _reasons_ , and he could sympathize. Bruce Wayne had some shoes to  _fill_  and he  _got that_  since he’s taken on the Flash…

“We get it,” he sighs and the Titans look over at him, subtly moving to face-off in case things get  _heated_. “It was wrong. Tim deserved better, yes, that’s true. I’m sorry for how that happened, but Batman was  _trying_  to keep the new Robin stable at the time. He’s a ten-year old  _kid_  with a lot of baggage, and Tim’s more mature. We thought he could handle it better than Damian.”

He gives a Gallic shrug, meaning everything and nothing.

Gar puts a hand up, his normal  _chill, dude_  demeanor gone. He’s the guy that lead for a while when Cassie needed to get her head on straight again, and the gravity of  _this_  little sitch pisses him right the hell off.

With false calm, Raven makes her feelings on the matter  _very clear_  when she actually speaks up, loud enough to be heard throughout the room. “At the time, you could have reminded Dick  _every Robin **must**_  be battle-tested for two-to-four years before he or she may join the Titan roster.”

Gar jumps right on  _that_  train, “You also could have told  _Dick_  the kid is  _ten_  and the majority of us are about to be in our  _twenties_. Let him start-up a group of younger dudes.”

Arthur’s brow goes up, his gaze flickering over to Hal. Both stay silent.

“You could have told Dick,” Bart finally decides to muscle in, “that  _we_  are going to make that decision since  _we’re_  the ones actually on the  _fucking team_.”

Wally frowns at him, but Bart glares right the hell back. Sure, he  _gets it_. Dick and Wally, him and Tim. KF and Robin have always been close, and the two speedsters are gonna have to  _agree to mother **fucking**  disagree_ on who’s best friend is in the right here.

Dick because he was  _Batman_  at the time?

Fuck.

That.

Shit.

Cassie, who had decided to give the JLA a moment to  _at least_  justify their actions, takes up the command spot when her spine straightens and she tells Diana with her eyes how  _very_  disappointed she is to find out this way. Pointedly, she turns her back on the daughter of Zeus, facing her team.

“I’m calling it,” she glances at each of them, putting the JLA out of the  _important things_  category. “We’re going to get him.”

Bart visibly fist pumps, and regardless of the mentors standing in their Commons Room after this nice  _let’s share_  moment (when they came to inform of Bruce’s return to the Batman mantle, and Dick taking a curious leave of absence from the Gotham scene for a while), the team stands as a unit and  _move_. 

Damian will remain Robin. Tim Drake is in the wind.

That’s when things started going downhill, and the truth comes out.

“Well, the old Batman is taking up the cape? That means Red can come back,” he and Kon had pretty much gone off the deep end for  _that_  possibility.

“ _Dude_ , we can totally find him in like, a snap, and let him know.”

“Shit, yeah! Original YJ in the  _house_.”

Cue the buzzkill when Arthur rained  _shit_  all over their parade. “No one has conferred with the Batman about reinstating Tim Drake’s permissions to be in the Tower.”

_That_? Totally killed the “Welcome Back Party” buzz because all of them, the whole damn team, turned to stare at the sparse gathering of the senior JLA because of things like  _permissions_  and  _reinstating_. Like they were insinuating Tim hadn’t  _come back_  because he’d been kicked the fuck out of the Tower or some—

_Oh_.  ** _OH!_**   _Oh, really now?_

And Kon? Kon has been  _pissed off_  before, sure. Superboy Prime being a dick bag, Luthor’s shitty plots to use him to  _kill_  people, and the list could really go on for a while, but the difference between these types of anger? He  _expects_  criminals to do  _shitty_  things—it’s why they’re the bad guys. He seriously never expects the  _good guys_  to do something almost equally as  _shitty_  (especially to one of their  _own_ ). He doesn’t  _just_  get that special kind of angry, he gets the extreme  _disappointed-in-you_  kind of angry (which is really a recipe for disaster).

So, Cassie is apparently on  _that_  vibe, glancing over the four of them.

“Wait,” Diana tries to placate when they all start to move because Cassie put the “Where’s Tim?” game into play, “we must confer with Batman on whether or not we can allow you to bring Tim Drake to the Tower. I am sorry, everyone, please believe me when I say we all respect his sacrifices,  _but_ —“

“You’re telling us who we can and  _can’t_  bring on our team?” And  _that’s_ …Gar is the most easy going member of the Titans when it comes to the JLA; he’s only going to get motivated to fight or help out  _in a fight_ , but will chill the fuck out for the rest of his time.

But, their green compatriot strolls right up in Diana’s  _face_  and stares without flinching. “Is  _that_  how it’s going to  _go_?”

“Garfield,” Clark wishes Vic had come along, but now understands why their other senior member ruthlessly told them he wasn’t getting involved in this  _mess_. “You need to understand—“

“Here’s what  _I understand_ ,” Gar’s gaze snaps over to the Man of Steel, “I  _understand_  you threw a good guy,  _one of us_ , out on his ass. I  _understand_  that the JLA is asserting some kind of  _right_  to control not only  _us_  but who  _we_  chose to fight with. I  _understand_  that you guys seriously made a bad  _call_. Oh,” Gar takes them all in, his spine straight, fists at his side, “and I  _understand_  that you just lost  _this guy_  because you obviously have no respect for any of us. Nice working with you,  _dude_.”

With a wave, Gar steps back, and turns toward the elevator, ready to head out.

The air around them on the Communal Floor turns  _frigid_ , Raven’s eyes peering out from under her cloak, “remove us from your superhero community roster. I believe we are both  _done_  working  _for you_.” And yes, yes she does  _mean it_. To Rachel, the use of illusions (a favored weapon of her Father) are tantamount to  _evil_ , and the JLA giving the illusion of equality while pulling some kind of rank just makes her  _angry_  down to her bones.

She floats after Garfield idly, taking her time while Clark’s eyes get  _huge_  and Arthur stands up, blinking in shock. Raven and Beast Boy are senior Titans, have been with the group since the first inception under Dick Grayson’s Robin, and  _this_ —

Cassie’s jaw clenches, and she lifts a forearms, releasing the arm guards one at a time. Diana’s eyes go wide, gasping as the lasso,  _Wonder Girl’s_  lasso, is removed. The items are laid at her feet carefully, and Cassie Sandsmark pulls the Wonder Girl t-shirt over her head, holds it out to drop at Diana’s feet.

“This cannot stand,” And it’s not a child, a subject of the monarchy; she’s another Amazon, a demigoddess, “it will  _not_  stand, Diana. Not anymore.”

And Diana is  _floored_ , looking from the discarded uniform to the young woman. “Cassie, this is all a misunderstanding. This—”

“There is no misunderstanding, Princess. It was an honor serving with you.” Cassie, in her white tank top, turns on her heel, walking past the others on her way out.

Diana straightens, biting her lip. The discarded clothes on the floor mocking her, remaining untouched.

Kon nods to himself and pulls the black t-shirt, the crest of the House of El, folds it, and lays it on the end table right by Clark’s hand. “Yeah, we’re not going to do this. Get your next generation ready.”

“ _Conner_ ,” Clark grips his wrist desperately, “please, give up Superboy, but don’t—don’t  _do_  this—“

Kon-El sneer, “don’t do what, Clark? Don’t do what’s  _right_? Aren’t you the one that told me doing the right thing wasn’t always easy but  _necessary_?”

“We haven’t— Conner, we really  _didn’t_   _mean for this—_ “

Kon pulls his wrist away, “I’m not your son, Clark. I’m a clone, of  _you_. You put me here to keep me calm, keep me from going the wrong way. I  _get it_. Good plan, but this—“ Kon throws his hand out, gesturing to all this  _fuckery_ , “no, man. No. I appreciate what you’ve tried to do, but maybe it’s time for another Superboy. One you can control, I guess since that’s really all the JLA  _wants_  from us.”

And the volumes of discord and discomfort between them, feelings that lasted for  _years_  before there could be any understanding, is the  _real_  reason Clark lets him go.

Wally, with a bitter taste suddenly in his mouth, is already looking down at Bart’s shorter stature just suddenly in front of him, and—

He’s already in the Impulse costume. One that  _fits_. This—this isn’t a spur of the moment thing, is it? With shaky hands (because Bart is his  _little dude,_ and just  _fuck_  the day he  _gave_ Bart _this_ — _his_ original KF suit), he accepts the folded Kid Flash uniform and goggles, looking from it and back to Bart’s face, and all he can think of is how  _crushing_  this is, how  _this_  shouldn’t be the way they part, the way Bart  _grows up_.

“It was a good ride, Wally, thanks,” and Bart gives him a nod before joining the rest of the Titans at the elevator.

The JLA stands staunch and solemn as the Titans disband, leaving the Tower to lock-down, to be filled with some  _other_  heroes that would be cowled under the foot of those that thought themselves always  _bigger, smarter,_ and  _more right_.

When the elevator closes, takes them to the roof for one last send-off, the group turns to face one another.

“Okay, soooo, I didn’t expect all of you to fall on your swords with me, ‘kay?” Gar flips his holoprojector so the green skin is smooth mocha, the hair dark as a raven’s wing, claws and fangs just this side of normal. “Seriously, totally a display of team cohesiveness and stuff, but def unnecessary.”

And they all  _know_  what’s going on. Gar’s eyes careful while he talks because he is totally  _giving them an out here_. Go back to their mentors, take their names back, totes wouldn’t blame you, guy.

Even with the unmentioned offer, none of the others move from the sliding feeling of ascending to the top of the Tower.

Kon shrugs, “Clark never wanted me to be Superboy anyway. It’s fine. John is getting older, so the name can stay in his family.”

Cassie arches a brow at him, “well, at least,  _Kara_  will finally be happy.”

“Yup, get the family crest off the reject, right?”

“She’s an asshole,” Bart snarks since he will always,  _always_  stand up for his  _bro_ , “and apparently stupid. You’re a good guy, Conner.”

“We are all worth more,  _better_ ,” Rachel sighs, “this is not how I would have foreseen things would go. The JLA has rarely interfered with deception such as this. I am more  _concerned_  than I have ever been.”

“I hate it’s come to this,” Cassie sighs from where she’s leaning against the elevator wall, “but, it’s time we got out from under the JLA anyway, well—“ She blinks up at them, hesitant.

“Agreed,” the others chorus in tandem.

A moment of silence while the doors slide open to the glass room that will open out onto the roof and give them the sky.

“So, are we all just  _leaving?”_  Bart finally asks, “because I’m still  _totally_  going to go find Tim. He’s out there doing his thing, and I fucking want  _in_.”

Conner grins, “I need to talk to the Kents, let them know I’m going to move out soon, and then, yeah. Yeah, I think we have a bird to find.”

Cassie grins a little, “sounds like a plan. I’ve got to settle some things at home too. Call me when we’re ready to reconvene.”

And the three swing their gazes expectantly over the Gar and Rachel, waiting for it.

“You are all a pain in my ass,” Rachel deadpans, tilting her head back enough so they can see her face.

Gar’s eyes blow wide in surprise for a  _second_ , and then he  _dies_ , rolling around on the floor while his  _sides_  hurt, dude, and just, so  _blah_ , so  _perfect_.

Rachel sighs and clears her throat so she can talk over Gar’s laughter, “what I mean to say  _is_ : as long as you will have me, I will fight with you. Call and I will come.”

Cassie bites her lips and abruptly takes the shorter woman in a bruising hug.

“Aw, you like us too much to send us to the carnivorous beat dimension now, just admit it,” Kon teases while Bart’s smile gets huge and his eyes are nothing but fond.

“Perhaps only once a month since you all are such good friends,” Rach pats Cassie on the back and is released. “As such, once you find Tim, call. Gar and I will meet you.”

Said Garfield is finally standing again, flipping a deuce, “totally! Once we find our guy, we’ll get a place to crash, some tech to break, and some baddies to squash. Sound righteous?” He sticks his fist out.

One-by-one, the former Titans lay their hands on top. Unfortunately, the JLA must not be aware—some things just don’t  _break_.

**

Once Conner Kent, Cassie Sandsmark, and Bart Allen take off from the Tower for the last time, Garfield Logan and Rachel Roth are left to stare at each other, the tension, the  _years_  of dancing around one another, refusing to do much—

Gar’s eyes are darker even with the holoprojectors; he makes an effort to clear his throat, act, you know,  _normal._  “Okay, so I guess I’ll see you—?”

Rachel stops him, steps into his space, takes his face into her hands, and presses them together. He blinks for a moment, but his mouth softens against hers, giving in to  _this_.

When she finally pulls back, her own eyes dark this time, she speaks only a breath away from his mouth, “I believe, we should…collaborate while the others are finalizing their own plans.”

Once of Gar’s brows arches, “collaborate? Hm, I like the sound of that, Rach.”

And a sly, slow smile spreads across her face, “how satisfying. You may wish to hear my  _other_  plans before you decide on how to rate them.”

This time, he’s gripping the side of her face, sliding his mouth over hers, pulling her body more fully against him, and Rachel sighs, makes a small  _noise_  perhaps before she raises a hand to the sky:

Azarath

Metrion

**_Zinthos_ **

The two vanish in a burst of dark light, dissipating to leave the sky clear and bright.

## No Home for Dead Bird VIII

His ass is cold.

The ache in his minor injuries is something ibuprofen probably isn’t going to fix. Too many years of saying  _fuck-it_  to actually taking care of himself. The result? He hurts in the mornings (afternoons) before he’s even twenty.

It is what it is.

Tim comes out from unconsciousness, swimming instead of snapping awake, awareness coming in  _degrees_.

It’s been almost two years since he’s felt safe enough to wake up with anything other than  _ready to fight_. The last time… the last time was waking up in Dick’s arms right after the Battle for the Cowl; Dick had taken Jason out of the running, had come back to the Cave beaten up but clutched the mark of the Batman like a terrible reminder of his new responsibilities. He’d showered, put the cowl up on display in the Cave, and taken Tim to bed, careful of his injuries (because Batarang to the chest is a pretty good way to make sure someone doesn’t get back up), but Dick had held on so  _tight_ , talked while the shock still set in, made his blue, blue eyes almost  _black._

There was so much,  _I can’t, I can’t **do**  this._

And his counter  _of course you can, you’re the best of us all. The superhero community knows Dick Grayson and Clark Kent are the most trustworthy_.

Dick had accepted that, somewhat pacified, and even though Tim hadn’t understood it at the time, they had made slow, careful love, bare in the dawn, changing positions, touching every inch of skin, licking and tasting, giving and taking, so,  _so_ much and not  _enough_  at the same time.

He hadn’t realized Dick was telling him with his body what he couldn’t say with his mouth.

_Good-bye_.

Two nights later, Dick had moved back to his room of the Manor, taken the smaller sundries out of Tim’s bathroom and bedroom, moving everything back, like covering up a dirty secret. The same night Dick said he was sorry for the decisions he would have to make.

More than one, more than a handful.

The feeling of betrayal, of  _worthlessness_ , of having to find out all of Dick’s plans by Damian walking out in a new, tailored Robin tunic, the culmination of Dick’s duplicity struck deeper than Jason’s knife in his thigh. Of course, Dick didn’t owe him an explanation, a  _reason_ , because he won the cowl fair and square, it was his  _right_  as the new Dark Knight to choose his Robin.

But  _fuck_ , a little preparation would have been nice. To be treated like an  _equal_  instead of just hearing Dick sprout it out while he couldn’t even  _look_  Tim in the face (like they had  _nothing_  together, like Tim Drake was  _nothing_ because another Robin was there to take over _,_  and the realization of his  _place_  started making  _sense_ ).

After he left, the very  _first_  voicemail:

_“I’m sorry how things turned out. I always…you know, I always thought if the worst ever happened like this, it would be you and me…together. Partners. I wanted that, Tim. You don’t know how much I **wanted**  that to happen, but I can’t let Damian fall by the wayside. He just lost his Father too, so I hope you can forgive him and maybe me someday, too. Anyway, I know you believe Bruce is alive, and just….*sigh* Tim, be careful.  **Please**  just be careful.  I’ll be here waiting when you’re ready to come back.”_

On the plane, his throat clogged with  _pain_  with this rambling  _older brother_  talk, Tim deleted Dick’s message and hasn’t listen to another since.

Things happened, life moved. He’d been evicted from Titan’s Tower, he’d almost given in to Ra’s al Ghul’s seductive influences (since someone wanted him  _after all_ ). He almost died a horrific death. He found out what happened to Bruce, cracked the secret  _of fucking time travel_ , and planned accordingly. He’d returned to Gotham in time to call his former team and save the loved ones in Bruce’s life. He’d almost died a third ( _fourth? Fifth? Something_ ) time. And fuck if he hadn’t pulled his Father back from some dystopian future to be back where he  _belonged_.

Shit had been busy, true, and after all that, the Red Robin went into a drawer to gather dust (because the bird is  _dead_ , right?), next to the Robin tunic—the  _other_  one.

It’s fine now. He’s had time to adapt, to keep moving regardless of the hard realizations (safety net? It was never  _real_  anyway). He’s done good things, been in the right place at the right time, pulled intel to make sure  _impending doom and destruction_  was thrown into the right radar.

He’s becoming his own brand of vigilante, not a carbon copy, not playing by the Bat rules, but his own designs.

Life is starting to break somewhat even.

**

And even with all the  _new and improved_ , it’s really a comfort that,  _some_  things? They don’t really  _change._

Bart still hogs all the covers. It’s the deal with speedsters once they  _stop moving_ ; the cold sets in. Dick had talked about Wally this way, about the need to smother him in blankets and hand warmers after a bad span of fighting. He’d adopted those protocols after the first few missions, watching Impulse crash and crash  _hard_  after using a mass of his energy and just come to a— _stop_.

At nights in his bed, or in Bart’s (Kon’s? always too messy to even  _try it_ ), he and Kon already gave up on having any kind of cover by morning, greeted by Bart the burrito.

And in just his boxers and t-shirt (bandages from injuries notwithstanding), the one closest to the door by rote ( _again, some things don’t change_ ), he doesn’t have shit for covers because Bart is wrapped up in the ratty blanket, obscuring Kon’s face but not the curve of shoulder and arm.

A wonderful,  _terrible_  pang strikes him  _deep_  before he’s snapping to like when he was  _that_  Robin and instincts are kicking in, kicking  _him_ , changing in degrees, because he  _gave this up_   _for the wrong reasons_  and  _they shouldn’t be here_  and  _he’s not that Tim anymore_. The varying reasons accompanied by the various reactions are fighting for dominance. Try to go back to sleep, pretend you still  _have this_ ; get out of bed and  _leave them to it_ , move to the next city; feed them and find out  _why_  they’ve come here (the JLA won’t use the Titans for this,  _hell fucking no_ ).

Tim can’t just lay back and put the past away, he’s long past putting away childish things. He starts pulling back, soundless.

The hand grabs him from somewhere in the center of the burrito.

“Go back to sleep,” muffled and sleepy but most definitely an order.

“I need to make coffee,” Tim tries, talking softly even though the other bedmate is serious with the  _super hearing_  and all.

“Dammit,” the burrito whines back at him. The hand lifts, shaking a forefinger close to his nose, “Coffee. No taking off,  _dude_. I can run  _faster_.”

His chest stutters, a half-laugh coming out while he’s staring at his best friend,  _the burrito_.

“Mmm-hmm, go back to sleep,” he eases off the bed without a tremble, moving silently away from the crap bed, picking up his sweats off the floor, throwing them on over his boxers. Kon’s jeans are thrown over there, Bart’s made it to the top of the bureau.

Tim jolts, thrown with conflicting synapsis:

_Fold the jeans, put them in the right drawers or the hamper, Kon’s the top drawer with Bart’s under and his third._

Or

_Keep walking, those aren’t things he_ does  _anymore._

He keeps walking.

**

Coffee makes everything better. Really, it’s should be the new ad campaign. Not like  _coffee_  really needed one, right?

Tim has the laptop out (probably breaking a few laws just with  _this alone_ ), and checks three of his five remaining data hubs.

Of course things are moving in the usual pattern of  _major incident on the horizon_  and  _keep an eye on these ass hats_. He has a rating scale of 1-10 depending on assholery ( _no, Bart, still not a word_ ).

The buzz from the kitchen table has him standing, moving to look at the bright screen of Kon’s cell phone and just the summary:

_From: BadAssAmazon_

_What did he say?_

Tim blinks and jerks back. Last night,  _last night_.

**

“Hope it’s cool if we crash with you, man. We need to have a little talk.”

He’d barely caught his breath seeing the two of them after all these months, after just kicking Dick the fuck out his window.

“Hey…I heard Titan’s Tower was abandoned.” And he’s got to be careful. So.  _Fucking_. Careful. Be neutral, be  _calm_.

Bart (because  _Bart_ ) moves obviously, gets himself off that couch to get right up in Tim’s  _up-close-and-personal_  bubble. “You see,  _Tim_ ,” and he says it like, you know, synonymous with  _asshole_ , “no one bothered to tell  _us_  the JLA pretty much kicked your ass  _off our team_  after Dick Grayson took your  _cape_.”

And the soft noise is the tightening of Bart’s bare hands into fists, the creak of anger in his  _bones_.

“And it’s pretty  _fucked up_  you just  _let it ride_  instead of telling us yourself. Like, what? You suddenly can’t  _trust us_? Like we don’t get to  _have your fucking back_  anymore? Just because you’re not Robin or some shit?  _Like that even fucking **matters**_?”

Silence is sometimes the best weapon.

Unless your best friends are assholes.

Bart lashes out, punching him in the shoulder, slow enough that Tim can counter it if he really  _wants to_.

“Ow,” instead he’s rubbing another bruise on top of bruise.

“Well?!”

“…I may have been slightly  _compromised_  after Dick dumped me and made Dami his partner,” the taller man shrugs, “sorry.”

Now Kon is looking just as pissed off as Bart.

“He  _what now?_ ”

_Oh shit._

“Don’t touch him. It’s almost been two years and that shit is over. I’m out of Gotham, have been, so no harm, no foul.”

“Please,” Kon sneers, “ _please_  tell me you are seriously fucking  _joking_ , okay? Kryptonite glove be  _damned_ , Grayson knew what was going to happen if he screwed you over, T. Like, I’m going to pummel his bones into  _paste_  and shit.”

Bart is just glaring up at him and his outline is just slightly wavy, like he’s vibrating so fast his molecules are ready to pull a  _later, man_.

“I’m out of the Bats,” he tries instead, “I’ve done as much as I can for them, and I’m moving the  _fuck_  on, okay? I’m not dealing with them, and they aren’t dealing with me. It’s  _done_ , so you two need to seriously  _take a pill_.”

Bart abruptly turns his back, shoulders rising when he takes a  _deep_ ,  ** _deep_**  breath since all he really wants to do is kick some sense into his best friend and just take a little  _stroll_  into the Bat Cave and maybe set-up a few nice booby traps for Grayson, put up some “ _Get Wrecked Dick”_  banners, maybe just make some strategic  _weaknesses_  in the new Robin’s suit (so he gets to fight crime bare  _ass_ —that’ll teach you, you little  _shit_ ), and just—just  _so, so many things right now—!_

But Tim’s hands are broader now, stronger, cover more of Bart’s shoulders than they used to back when—

_(grasping hands, the smooth glide of skin on skin, the worship of scars, writhing and gripping with all the strength he has_ )

“I’m sorry,” Tim’s hands slide around, he steps up to put his chest against Bart’s back, to let his arms wrap around, to have  _something_  to hold on to and just  _fuck_... this makes his chest  _hurt_. First Dick and now  _these two_.

“I—Bart, I’m  _sorry_.”

The broken, the quiet. In all their time as protectors, as  _heroes_ , Bart Allen and Conner Kent know when shock is about to give way. When something destructive is hovering. They  _know_  how close Tim has come to the edge, how close to jumping off…

Bart just turns in Tim’s grip, wraps his own arms around ( _his bird, **their**  bird_) (and  _this is unexpected, who wants a dead fucking bird anyway?)_  and holds Tim  _tight, tight_  to ground him, to bring him out of wherever his head might be (just like when they were  _more_ ). Conner is up and moving, his steps jerky, but he doesn’t stop until he’s pressed right up against Tim’s back and holding on, too. Neither of the former Titans lets him hit the floor when his knees inevitably give out.

They ignoring the rolling, whispering nonsense just spewing from the dark depths, “I didn’t mean to—I  _couldn’t_  drag you down with me. There was  _no way_  to let you know—“

Rather, they cradle him between them and slowly sink to the floor, staying close while dawn is finally painting the sky with purples and pinks.

No one needs to move, not yet. The two younger heroes can sit curled around their third and let him shake apart between them.

How they made it to bed is still a blurry bullet point in the  _Making an Ass of Yourself_  presentation. He vaguely remembers the uncomfortable clothes coming off, of Kon’s hands turning him, of being in the middle for a while, his knees drawn up against Kon’s thighs and Bart’s forehead at the nape of his neck. Of hands on his back, hands on the old scars on his calves and biceps, hands finding raw and aching points of pain, hands gripping, holding, tight and stable, breath against his cheek and forehead.

There was some talk maybe, Kon telling him how Gar got right up in Di’s grill and pretty much told her  _suck it, I’m **out**_. Clark not fighting for  _fuck_  because, really, how much of a shit does Superman  _give_? Wally the only one that could have been a little crushed, but not enough to fight Dick over anything. Maybe something about the others, something about fighting the good fight regardless.

He knows the slight, subtle shift of ozone that’s Kon’s constant, the faint musk that’s Bart’s hair in his face. He knows warmth and comfort happened there when his brain was half-blown because alone had been just fine  _when he was fucking alone_ , and the two of them in this end-of-the-world city, where he could escape the  _past_  and start moving.

Sleep hadn’t come that fast or that easy in longer than his brain can calculate.

And this morning, he scrubs a hand down his face while the updates pour in from his hubs, let him know Mirror Master is still a dick bag, Luthor is starting to sell off some old tech since the  _last_ round of terrible bad guy calisthenics cost him big time, N.O.W.H.E.R.E might try to rebuild something bigger than a toothpick if they can really recover after kidnapping Bart almost a year ago (and yes, he knows where they are and makes sure they’re  _aware_ , hacking their systems occasionally and making them watch episodes of Japanese game shows. You know, just so they  _get the point_ ).

Something sparks about the League of Assassins, but he only skims over it. Batman’s arch-nemesis needs to stop trying to find him, he’s had enough being thrown out of windows for the decade, thanks.

His second cup of coffee is more to keep his ass in the ratty tenement more than for the caffeine (since he honestly can’t remember the last time he’s slept that long—it’s weird not to be riding  _some_  kind of sleep dep). They’re going to be up, and if he’s in the wind already, certain  _protocols_  and  _consequences_  will probably follow—ones that he has no intentions of dealing with.

Ever.

At all.

Cassie and Rave are  _fucking scary_  when they collaborate on the “Where’s Tim?” game.  And, no, he’s trying to stay incognito (no new  _name_ , remember?), under the radar; an all-out effort from the likes of Kon, Bart, Cassie, Rach, and Gar would spell impending  _disaster_.

Apparently two of the five are surprised he’s  _still here_.

“Not dreaming?” Only tufts of hair, half-mast eyes, and socked feet are showing around the burrito.

Tim waves a hand down himself with a flourish.

Kon is almost on Bart’s blanket, looking at him right over Bart’s head. “Nice. Contrary to popular belief, super hearing only works on people that make  _noise_.” And he has a horrific moment in his sleepy state to remember that tiny, inconsequential metallic  _click_ —the one moment that let him save Tim’s life.

Logging out of his separate sites and news sources, Tim turns the laptop off and tucks it away, taking his coffee in both hands to keep them busy.  He sips gingerly, waiting for the two of them to get Kon a cup and Bart a glass of juice (old habit and he didn’t even  _realize_ ) since speedsters do  _not_  need caffeine.

Instead of take up space on the couch with him or in one of the threadbare-bin chairs, the two former Titans fold themselves down to sit on the coffee table facing him, their legs blocking his in.

From the firmness of Kon’s jaw and the sudden serious look in Bart’s eye, he might regret not going out the window when he had the chance.


	4. IX and X.1, X.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> IX: “Cassie, this is the men’s room.”  
> Drabble, Dick Grayson: The logo on the front of a double string helix with the words “Checks itself before it wrecks itself”  
> X.1: “Why the fuck did it take you this long?”  
> X.II: “What’s with the mask, freak?”  
> “Your mother loves it,” he deadpans darkly since, well, bantering and such.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, so X.I and X.II have only been on Tumblr. Here is where the new will start.

## IX

_Bad Guy Rule #64: When facing a team of superheroes, go for the one making the plans. The rest will go down like dominoes when you take out the brains._

The airport in Las Cruces should be full of the midnight mass of travelers— _should be_ , and it’s just his fucking  _luck_  it’s not. But, when on the run from super-powered assholes apparently with something to  _prove_ , things don’t normally go your way _._ Some kind of intelligent design probably.

The device in his pocket emits a low frequency sound attuned to his heartbeat because projecting a heart murmur is one of the plans to throw them off (since, well, kryptonite is in another safe place further east).  The pair of devices in his other pocket are the quintessential  _stop_ —ones that work exceedingly well against speedsters. Take the first two power houses out, and he has  _options_  for the others (Cassie always has a special soft spot for the innocent bystanders; Gar will stop at  _nothing_  if a threat is posed to Rach, like maybe residual Trigon energy in crazy small inanimate objects—just, you know,  _plans_ ).

And since he isn’t ( _supposedly_ ) carrying anything more than a messenger bag with his laptop, fake IDs, cash, and a half-bag of Skittles, no one really looks at the rough young man in an oversized hoodie twice.

Except for the random group of teenagers attempting to move through the airport looking mostly  _normal_  while doing things not really part of that considerable realm. Your normal, run-of-the-mill teenagers don’t look like they’re about to  _kill_  things with extreme prejudice and you’d better get the  _fuck_  out of the way or become part of the debris.

Bart, hidden under a stupid baseball cap, is on the cusp of  _Fuck.This. Noise_., cracking his neck with aggression in his usual way before time to start up with the  _fast, fast_.

Cassie just continues her stride over the excessively shiny floor, worn boots making the  _clip-clop_  sound at the heel—even absently looking around, she’s dangerous with that stride. Well, on a  _mission_ , is more apt. Kon and Bart are quick walking to keep up with her in  _find it_  mode. She scans over the sparse gathering of people waiting around for delayed or late flights as she moves with a sway in her long steps; each person is met with dismissal after a second or two, and she doesn’t even have to turn her head from the inspection to snag Bart’s bicep and put  _that_  process to a halt.

“No,” an under-the-breath order, “we’re keeping a low profile, remember?”

Bart, quick stepping since she’s playing into the image by holding his hand ( _dragging him along)_ while Kon keeps a finger in the belt loop by her right hip, glances up from under the cap, “I can find him in four seconds, tops, you know,” he deadpans.

“You did that last time, too,” she replies serenely, “how did that work out again?”

A sad smirk and Kon’s annoyed noise makes  _that_  point. Cassie’s eyes jerk to the—

 _No_.  _Right build, right clothes and hair, but not the right stance._

She keeps moving, waiting for the two with her to  _get the picture._  For best friends and ex-boyfriends, Kon and Bart are surprisingly oblivious when it comes to Tim Drakes unique little  _mannerisms_. The paranoia was always a  _Robin_  thing (which seems to be quickly falling to the wayside if the reports they’ve been reading about a traveling, somewhat  _reckless_ , lone vigilante are completely accurate), but the contingency planning? All the  _real_  Tim Drake (not to mention the shut-down of emotions for his  _pragmatism_ — that’s all Tim Drake  _now_  which is incredibly disturbing to her on multiple levels. Luckily, her little  _talk_  with Stephanie Brown concerning Dick Grayson  _after_  he left Tim’s apartment, provided some motivation behind everything, and, as she let him know, he’s  _very_  fortunate she decided against punching his balls into his throat since  _some_  of the superhero community believe in  _ethics_ ).

“Not…well,” Kon fills in, “it started out okay. We thought we had him for a while, but…it went downhill from there.”

She sighs a little as they come up on the next gate. “This is why I told you both to keep me in the loop. He  _knows_  he’s emotionally compromised with you two and will over- _compensate_ just on basic principle.”

Bart’s features twist into something utterly  _painful_  just long enough for her to catch it out of the corner of her eye, but well—she can understand. Tim  _running_  from them like this is very telling on how badly the last two years  _fucked him up_.

Clenching her jaw, struck again by the urge to just show up at Dick Grayson’s apartment with a fist full of  _hello you stupid asshole, hope you didn’t need those molars_ , Cassie is already trying to figure out how they’re going to talk Tim out of his own idea of exile.

She comes up with a little more than diddly squat, hoping her instincts will give her what she needs when the time comes.

“What do you see in the vents?” She asks under her breath, knowing Kon would hear (and even  _Kon-El_  might change soon; Conner Kent is a little more than paper now anyway, but she knows how painful it was for him to take all of his belongings out of the Kent’s farmhouse in Kansas).

“Dust,” he comes back, fingers tightening in the loop, “cobwebs, some cameras, standard Homeland, not specialty bird-tech.”

“We’re eventually going to run out of airport,” she huffs, annoyed.

“He may have already boarded a plane,” Bart comes back reasonably, “or he might have put clues here to throw us off.”

But something,  _something_  tells her they’re in the right place this time.

“He’s here somewhere,” her certainty makes both her comrades raise a brow.

But—

Kon’s finger tightens in her belt loop to stop her, eyes wide, “it’s so scary when you do that,” he mutters absently as all of them catch a glimpse of the hunched, hooded figure heading into the men’s room right off Gate 145, flight to Paris, France.

“Skill,” she replies absently, already changing directions, and—

**Not**

**Stopping**

“Whoa, whoa!” Bart hisses, trying to pull his hand back but, well,  _super strength_ , “Cassie you  _can’t go in there_ —“

“Watch me.” She’s already pushing open the door, dragging Bart and Kon along for the ride.

The two marvel that she is either scarily magical like Rave or has the luck of ever demigoddess  _ever_. The only one in the restroom is the guy in the oversized hoodie carrying a beat-up backpack and an equally beat-up skateboard; one with sharp blue eyes and a  _plan_  (since, you know, he already has the vent cover off and such). Even with blonde streaks and the fake goatee, the former Titans  _know_  their bird.

“Tim,” Cassie smiles gently, “long time, no see.”

Blinking at them, Tim Drake’s jaw drops, “ _Cassie_ , this is the  _men’s room_.”

“She’s got a lot of  _balls_ , Tim,” Kon snarks back, glaring because some  _loveable asshole_  really needs to chill out on the  _let’s avoid everything and be a fucking gypsy vigilante for a while_  thing.  

“Agreed,” a sleight of hand and whatever weapon Tim was going to use against them is put away in his back pocket. Well, totally looking for  _that shit_ , dude. “It’s nice to see you, Cassie.”

“Likewise,” she informs warmly, “I’d like to catch-up, but this isn’t a social call, Tim.”

And because Cassie Sandsmark is also a leader, she  _knows_  the strengths and weaknesses of her people; she knows their pet peeves as superheroes and their personal missions. She also knows how to gain their  _interest_. Keeping Tim Drake from vanishing regularly is going to take something huge, and she think she know exactly what that might be.

Tim’s blonde brow goes up as he slowly straightens from his crouch by the vent, “I’m not in—“

“We’re setting up a new home base. Somewhere we can start the new team, away from the JLA and the cities of their main members. It’s solo act time for us.” She lays it out, tilting her head quizzically at him. A slight squeeze to Bart’s hand and the speedster goes to guard the door. “We need someone for two weeks to help us get our systems and protocols off the ground. You were the main proponent in creating the systems and networks for Young Justice and the Titans. We need that skill now.”

Tim’s eyes narrow, most his face in shadow because of the hood, “who is ‘we’?”

Cassie just smiles. “Accept my offer, come to help us get started, and you’ll find out.”

And Tim, Tim Drake, blinks at her once, twice.

_Almost._

“Where?” It’s a hard tone, not Robin’s, something  _different_. Bart and Kon told her where they’d found him, what he’d been doing, how they came right in on the tail of Dick Grayson—all signs that pointed to the possibility of their former teammate deciding his life no longer worth the cost of living, perhaps without someone listening in to stop him the second time. Realistically, how long could he go on moving from city to city without a net before something  _happens_? (Before he just  _lets_  something happen?)

“Like I said,” she comes back, “away from our old mentors. You can either come with us or get on your plane and keep playing at doing something worthwhile.”

Tim’s eyes narrow, and now  _that look_  makes a shiver run up Bart’s spine and Kon lick his lips unconsciously; that? That is a look they definitely  _recognize_.

Cassie forces her feature to remain neutral even though  _Got You_.

“Forty-eight hours,” Tim finally comes out with it. “Forty-eight hours to see what you’ve got. Anywhere near the Bats or the JLA, and I’m going to start detonating things. Hidden things. No one wants that.”

Kon just throws up  _his fucking hands_ , “You and your  _goddamned_ contingencies!”

Bart rolls his eyes, “who cares? Like we haven’t  _blown shit up before_. So, can we  _please_  move this out of the men’s room before someone actually tries to come in here?”

All of them.  _All of them_ , give him  _the look_.

It’s totally great and lame at the same time. That’s what the shortest guy gets now that Tim is somehow  _taller_.

Seriously, fuck you tall people, okay?

He sighs and goes right back to guarding the door, throwing a double bird over both shoulders because  _really_.

“Seventy-two,” Cassie comes back, “the systems I need will take a majority of that. I have connections that will need to be integrated. That doesn’t even cover the wiring and tech we’ll need in the… _installation_.”

And just like he used to, she sees Tim read into her words, puzzle out the possibilities, make contingencies—and just,  _damn_  if it isn’t nice to watch the progression all over again. The last time in his old Perch in Gotham right after the first Batman was found—the fear for him was already creeping up her throat like bile. He was so off, so  _different_  and not in any positive way.

The grainy camera footage of him a few weeks ago in Birmingham, Alabama had been enough to get them moving in on his location—whether or not he wanted to be found. The startling lack of heavy armor, of color, of a utility belt, all points of  _what the **hell**  is this supposed to be?_ Watching him fight with the bo only sparingly but stick with street boxing and few of his old martial arts moves; watching him jump with more grace than he used to, only a line, no grapple guns, no back-up should the rope snap…

The video was of some vigilante they’d never really met; one that was stealthier than Robin, more reckless, less careful to plan his moves before diving into the fight.

One that didn’t give a damn if he died in a gutter fighting thieves and rapists. One that would lay down if the blood loss was too much of a bother.

 _“I fear for him,”_ and this from Raven _, “he is in a cage with no bars_.  _I **fear**  for him._”

Cassie, with steely determination, had sent the five (Miguel with Gar since he hadn’t met Tim) out, scattering to look for the next possible sighting.

Imagine her level of  _pissed the hell off_  when Dick Grayson beat them to him.

Tim has had a full sixty seconds to process, and Cassie holds out a hand (since sending Kon and Bart hadn’t really had the  _effect_  she was hoping for), “well?”

**

“Explain to me,” and the rolling, deep, darkness of the tone, the  _richness_  of speech, echoes throughout the caves, reverberating through the assembled mass, “how it is that you have  _lost_  him?”

Below the daises, the three followers bow with foreheads on the ground, prostrating themselves before their  _God_. In the way of true fanatics, the only reason they  _live_  is because of his  _grace_.

“He has left no trail, my lord.  _Nothing_. He does not intend to be found.”

And with the grace of a predator, he stands from his throne, moving with purposeful steps to put himself on their level.

“ ‘He does not intend to be found’?” And the slight tilt makes the air tense, “I employ the best thieves in the world, the most skilled marksmen, the most sucessful huntsmen, and yet, we cannot find  _one_  teenage  _boy_?”

His men rise up and bow once again.

Failure.

Most _…disappointing_.

Displeased with this turn of events, he turns to the others in the room shrouded in shadows, walking slowly while he thinks and regards them.

“It seems I have erroneously placed faith in these three,” and at his throne, he pulls his trusted blade from the sheath at the right hand, the glimmer of steel in candlelight. “All of you are aware I do not tolerate  _incompetence_.”

The play of movement along the wall is precise motion; he is so fast the next two are dead before the third can even begin to beg for his  _life_.

As a testament to his chosen  _profession_ , his clothing remains  _pristine_.

Straightening from his impressive crouch, he accepts a cloth from a bowing servant, and moves around in the circle of light, allowing all of the shadowed figures to watch him clean his blade.

“No one else will fail me,” he keeps his tone light, a statement of fact. “You will find him, and you will find him  _now_.”

Only a whisper is the shadows becoming empty once more, and Ra’s al Ghul holds his sword up to the candlelight, making sure the blood of the unclean is gone.

“And you, Detective, shall run no longer. It is  _time_  for you to accept my offer.”

**

New Orleans, Louisiana 72:00:00

“This is  _insane_. What the  _hell_  are you thinking?”

Since Kon and Bart lost him  _the first time_ , Cassie is the one carrying Tim Drake through the air, one arm around his waist and the other to keep her balance. She laugh a little as his disbelieving tone comes and goes with the wind.

“You think so?” She returns, looking down over the bustling city. “I think it’s really quite brilliant.”

“It’s a  _major_  city with a dense population and  ** _flooding_** problems, Cassie,” he grits out.

She manages to shrug using the arm holding him, “hm. Maybe you should have been on the ‘let’s establish a new place to hang-out’ survey team, Tim, but since you missed out on that, here we are.” Her eyes slide over where his expression is pinched, and  _yes_ , yes that’s why she’s smiling.

However, she gives him the answer, the acceptable one he’ll actually  _consider_. “Besides, no hero  _ever_  has been able to help this place. Many have tried to say here, and they’ve all failed. We thought it might be time for a  _real_  challenge.”

And, hm.

His bare face (so used to seeing a domino and whiteouts,  _this_  is really strange) turns to her, eyes narrow in  _something_  like contemplation…and  _interest_. She knows all the right buttons to push. Take into account the former Titans have been tracking his movements for the last few months, tracing cities and hideouts, trying to find any footage of him in action, making correlations to where he stops and stays for a few weeks before moving on.

As Gar pointed out, all of the cities are like Gotham lite—dangerous and riddled with crime, just without all the  _crazy_  to go with it.

Bart jumped on that way of thinking, pointing out the architectural differences between Gotham’s Gothic darkness to the Tim’s  _new_  regular—slums overrunning the landscape, smaller buildings without the need to swing high, major crime syndicates brought down by evidence played blatantly on every major internet site rather than by vigilante intervention.

Tim saved real patrolling for the down and dirty criminals; the political maneuverings, he used strictly anonymous screen name and data.

Very different, and very telling.

Also, it gave Cassie a stroke of  _genius_  that might just be the way to bring him back to stay.

With Tim looking at her now, eyes narrowed with wariness, body much lighter than the last time she gave him a lift (including backpack and skateboard)—everything she can see, everything they’ve learned all point to the fact that he  _needs_  them as much as they need him.

Well, here’s hoping her brilliant move might do the trick.

Deflecting that scrutiny or the moment, she tilts her head closer to be heard over the wind, “they missed you, you know. Moaned and complained about how worried they were. I think Kon stared at his phone for an hour after we left your Perch in Gotham... well, and after you vanished when we went for Bart. The explosion was a nice touch.”

“Sometimes you have to go out with a bang,” he deadpans.

“You? Are  _such_  a dork.”

“So you’ve told me.”

She sighs, rolls her eyes, “the  _point_  is: they’re happy to see you. They…there is apparently  _a lot_  we didn’t know. A  _lot_ , Tim.” She tries again, and—

 _Blink_.

“I—“ he stutters an important second, closing down immediately before he turns his gaze back to the city below them.

Her thoughts turn pleasant with the image of Dick Grayson suffering again. Maybe out in space somewhere, far, far out. She’d have to talk to Kory someday.

“People never look up,” he interjects awkward, deflecting as hard as he can. “Never understood that. Even in Gotham, Metropolis, where people  _know_ , they still…don’t look  _up_.”

Cassie hums a little even though he can’t hear it, “of course not, Tim. Why would regular people want to acknowledge the  _need_ for metas and vigilantes like us in the world? Looking for us, looking up expecting us, that just makes the possibilities more  _real_. It shakes up their reality.”

Tim considers this as the descent is  _likewise_  not noted by the busy street, further making his skin crawl  _just slightly_. It’s broad day light, and he’s accustomed to a whole different kind of mask.

Luckily, another point Cassie was apparently trying to make,  _this_  is  _New Orleans_. A majority of things happening down on the street would be more interesting than a couple flying kids lighting down on the street’s tallest roof, seven stories, child’s play.

The hand around his wrist doesn’t let go for a second, and she taps her code into the deceptively crappy access door. On auto-pilot, he picks out the flaws (vents need pressure traps, key pad could be hidden better, the blind spot is on the wrong side), and what would need to be added for more security.

From the side view, Cassie is grinning already. The door gives way to a small elevator with tech that hits the  _better but not up to standard_  file in his mental rolodex.

Oh yeah, that’s the smug face.

“This is really a terrible set-up,” but Tim doesn’t fight her tug to step inside and let the door slide closed again. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”

Movement as they descend, and he’s calculating contingencies on getting  _out_  if something or someone were to try and get access—

Still  _smug_ , “we’ve been together long enough that I’m pretty sure I have an idea on the inner working of Tim Drake.”

“This is entrapment, you know.” Terrible security failures and systems engineering always  _are_. Damn.

“Well, not necessarily. I didn’t ask you for a  _thing_ ,” Cassie takes the necklace she’s wearing under her shirt off and plugs a key into the elevator panel, “except to come and help get our systems up and running.” She presses a button and the smooth glide makes everything a little better.

“How many underground floors are there?”

“Seven.”

“ _Seven?_ ” As in  _only?_

“Seven.  _And_ , you notice I didn’t ask you to come back for good. I wouldn’t pressure you like that. If you want to come with us, your spot is always open.” Her eyes are darker blue than usual, arms crossed over her chest and the utter  _calm_ , cool, and collected that is very much who Cassie has grown to be in the last few years. Breaking away from Diana may have done her more good than he originally thought.

“Well, leaving the Titans was a nice gesture,” and he can grin over at her, feeling some of the tension, some of the effects of isolation ease. “Really. I heard you told Diana to kiss your ass.”

She laughs because  _Tim_. “Not necessary. We are simply no longer on the same road for the same journey. It was time to move in a different direction. I think everyone…well, saw the writing on the wall before we came to Gotham to help you get your Batman back.” She shrugs a little carelessly, but her expression is solemn, and Tim realizes this move, maybe needed, still took its toll.

_Dammit, now I want to—_

“It’s better this way. Even Rach and Gar came with us, we recruited Miguel—you’ll probably like him, he’s… _very_  excited to meet the former Red Robin. Gauging his power and how to interact with the rest of the team in a fight has been challenging, but he’s really a fantastic guy.”

And her off-handed comments just keep  _working_  to peak his interest, to switch gears to programming training sims, to run diagnostics on the new member’s capabilities and—

“Kon’s TTK is also getting better. He has more capabilities now. Rach…well, we had some Trigon issues—“

“She was able to channel her half-human self when he had taken her over,” Tim interject quietly, leaning back against the wall.

“Mmhm, still accessed our systems, didn’t you?”

A shrug that could mean everything and nothing.

The elevator finally glides to a stop, “Ah. Here we go. You can use this section of rooms while you’re here getting everything together.”

And the door slides open seamlessly—into his  _world_.

The set-up is meticulous  _Tim Drake_ , monitors, powerful CPUs, and—

A logo floating across the broad screens.

He hasn’t realized he’s moved until Tim’s across the room, past the desk and wall of holographic screens depicting maps, littered with different colored dots, analysis working on overseas terrorists. The sleek design and meticulous tech make a shudder roll down his spine as he looks up at the logo and—

“It’s for the one that steps into that role,” Cassie answers easily, “it’s a work in progress, but we’re going to need an intel guy.”

Tim stares a few more seconds before he calmly turns his gaze to her slightly smiling face.

“We’re going to need an oracle of our own to stay in the game.”

And she holds back when his eyes take on  _that look_ , when Tim Drake visibly straightens, and his old self is right there in his stance, in his expression.

Kon and Bart are going to owe her fifty dollars each. She just won the bet.

_Got you_

 

## Drabble: Dick Grayson

**

Being an acrobat means rarely having your feet  _on the ground_. It’s the rush of flying, the adrenaline, the  _freedom_. He’s never been able to carve the circus boy out of his being, it’s planted to the  _root_.

Moving from Robin to Nightwing, to  _move_ , to be  _free_  from Gotham City was more of a gift than a punishment, or so he’d come to realize after a few months of being his own man, making his choices without factoring in Bruce’s reactions or Bruce’s way of thinking about a situation. So many of his choices always had a shadow of the man who raised him, the man who influenced him to take this life and use it for the good of everyone. If not for Bruce, who knows what would have happened to him after his mom and dad died? If not for Bruce, he’d been some drifter moving from town to town or…dead.

Robin gave him purpose, gave him family, gave him connections to people he desperately needed. Nightwing let him keep it.

And he’s back in it, the black and blue bodysuit,  _his_  suit,  _his_  insignia, and it’s so  _light_  comparatively, not nearly as heavy as the Bat in the center of his chest. He’s been back in it for a few months, readjusting to his life when he thought he’d never wear Nightwing again. That he would die with a false pseud instead of as himself (no one can  _really_  be the Bat but Bruce, not even his first partner).

And it’s like he’s that circus kid again, the rush of flying, the adrenaline when he leaps to take on criminals, the freedom to do what he feels he needs to do. It sucks to lose Dami ( ** _his_** _Robin in a way Tim could never be_ ) now that B is back because they’ve come  _so far_  in the last year, they’ve come to an understanding on what it mean to wear the cape, to take the lives of the people around them seriously, to stop underestimating the criminals they face and their capabilities, to  _try_  being a family that talks things out and—

The same things he failed to teach Jason, that he tried to teach Tim…

 _Tim_.

( _Those hands have gotten bigger than last year, now he palms the side of Dick’s neck and pull him down for a kiss…_ )

(“ _You wanted to JLA to shut me out of the Titans, done. You let Damian push me out of the Manor and the Cave, done.  You wanted the **right**  Robin, the blooded one?  **Done**.”_  No, Timmy, no…  All I ever wanted was you—you just  _weren’t_  the most pressing need—)

Tonight, in an unfamiliar city, in an unfamiliar room, with a  _very_  familiar tumbler of whiskey, Dick Grayson has an uncharacteristic span of utter self-loathing. For the first time in years, he’s drinking like he needs to forget.  Well, he knows the irony in that because Bats don’t forget—not even when they’re  _dead_.

The darkness is soothing, only moonlight yellow and dirty through the cheap hotel windows, lighting up his bare feet on the bed, still a foot too far away to light up the ratty t-shirt he’s clutching to his chest in one fist while the other throws the whiskey back whenever the pain and old regrets starts to get heavy enough to pull him  _under_.

The t-shirt is worn, washed over and over again, the logo on the front of a double string helix with the words “ _Checks itself before it wrecks itself_ ” below. The shirt is much too small to fit his shoulders or torso and still smells like the musk of skin. Alfred had picked it up from somewhere, buried in some niche in the Manor (not his old room—every last scrap of identifiable anything is long gone, just another indication he  _isn’t coming back_ ; a sign ignored until recently after that little talk with Jason Todd…and  _now_ , it could be  _real_ ). He managed to get his hands on it before Alfred threw it in the wash, taking the shirt back up to hang in his own closet—just…just in  _case_.

He wasn’t even thinking when he brought it, some unconscious auto-pilot packing it up in his travel duffle even though he never had any intention of giving it back ( _it might be all I have left_ ).

Black and blue is still folded in the duffle, deflated because the hope of trying to start back on the road to fixing things, to nudging himself back in Tim’s  _life_  has been equivocally slaughtered ( _for the moment_ ); all the good intentions, the weeks of searching, the  _months_  of worrying, the year of blissful  _denial_  are pathetically, woefully deficient in the face of a long-coming  _epiphany_.

In the years he’s been living the life of a vigilante, Dick prides himself on very seldom making the sacrifice play with anyone other than himself. For Batman, more often than not, for hostages or for other heroes in trouble—count on Dick to throw himself on his proverbial sword and agree to take the brunt of whatever reaction is coming. The whole  _save the innocent people_  mentality. It’s really the Bat way.

But now that he has hindsight on his side, he can see he’s done exactly that: sacrificed Tim’s safety and sanity in exchange for Damian’s; he’d sacrificed Tim when Bruce would have found a better way—would have done what was best for  _both_  of them.

He’s spent the last year justifying  _needs_  over  _wants_ , safe in the knowledge that hard times call for hard choices, and regardless of what he did, someone was bound to get  _hurt_. In that perspective, the choice was obvious on what he had to do, on  _who_  had to take precedent. Back then, he’d only allowed himself to see the sacrifices  _he_  was making for the best end result, trusting everyone else around him would get the picture.

The assumption was really his own diversion from  _talking_  about things close to his heart, that he wouldn’t have to  _tell_  Tim they were temporarily breaking up so he could try to earn Damian’s trust, that he still  _wanted_  Timmy with everything, but he had to be something different. Not forever, just let Dami get to trust him, to trust  _them_ , to be part of the family and  _accept_ —

He expected Tim to get  _the plan_. He  **expected**  Tim to be upset over Robin and to go out in the world to get his own name, to come back a different man, not a Robin.

He expected Tim to see how he was just trying to make the right choices for everyone; for Tim to let him just  _hug_  and be grateful, and maybe be able to be close again once Dick spent time trying to soothe the hurt feelings. By then, Damian would be more stable, and Dick could dedicate the time to Tim.

He expected them to be partners again someday, for the trust to still  _be there_  or able to be  _won back_.

In his way of jumping head-first once he’s got a plan set in motion, he showed up at the tenement building where he’d tracked the illusive Tim Drake. The Tim Drake that would turn nineteen in a few short weeks; the Tim Drake that hadn’t returned his phone calls or answered text messages. The Tim Drake that told Bruce there was no home for dead birds.

In retrospect, also the Tim Drake he’d fallen so  _hard_  for, the one that made his heart feel almost  _healed_  like back when he was a stupid kid in love with Barbara Gordon. The one that held him after the Battle for the Cowl when the weight of what he’d taken on had almost crushed his lungs, the one that laughed at his stupid jokes and returned the slew of witty banter, the one that  _believed_  in him, in his goodness and capabilities, no matter what else may have hit. The one that, once upon a time, set his weaknesses and vulnerabilities right in Dick’s  _safekeeping_. Those same weaknesses and vulnerabilities he’d used against the other former Robin— _and he hadn’t even realized it at the time._ How far he’d played right into Tim’s deepest secret fear, that he’d  _abandoned_  the young man just like everyone else.

( _“You’re my equal, Tim. You can’t be my Robin, I have nothing to **teach**  you.”_

 _“How could you do this without even **talking**  to me, Dick,” and all the pain, all the betrayal in the stiff spine, the wide, hurt eyes. “How could you  **do**  this?” _To me _remains unsaid because to get through to Damian, he had to, temporarily, end his relationship with Tim. If they stayed together, Damian would never stop challenging, never let himself get close._

_“Tim, you’re seventeen, and it’s time for you to move on, to think about creating your own name.”_

_“Robin is all I have left,” is a choked admission, something bitter enough for Tim’s eyes to sheen over, for him to blink rapidly against it. “I don’t have anything **else** , Dick.”_

_“Neither does Dami, Tim. He has even **less**  because he doesn’t have the kind of resources and experiences you do.” And the logic of it should have appealed to Tim, should have made him _see _the reasons behind it._

_Well, he was wrong._

_“I never would have thought you could be this heartless,” and Tim turns away, fists clenched hard enough to make his forearms strain._

_“You’re acting like a child!”_

_“Oh? Are you sure I’m not acting like I just got **dumped**  on top of everything  **else**?” As soon as the words came out of his mouth, a strange something in Tim’s eyes. A realization, a calculation come to fruition; something that made him crumple slightly in on himself enough to make Dick pause and something _ very real _broke between them. Dick could feel it, but had to push it away because other things_ were more important. _And Tim was ducking out of the kitchen of the Manor, throwing open the door to_ run _before Dick could call out to him. It’s fine, Timmy just needed time to get accustomed to everything—_  how arrogant for him to assume that? For him not to  _realize_  how easily he was taking Tim apart piece-by-piece? For him to make Tim believe he was just a placeholder for some idealized Robin that didn’t even  _exist_ :  _“You didn’t have to lower yourself to **fucking**  me—“)_

Also the Tim Drake that came a hairsbreadth from ending his own life.  And the  _horror_ , the sick copper and bile that rose up in his throat when he and O listened to the Titan’s comm they’d  _finally_ managed to hack on the road to finding out where Tim might be holding up, waiting with his chest  _burning_  for air, but he  _can’t breathe_ , hoping, praying, knees giving way while they both prayed ( _Please, **please**_ ,  _don’t let him **do**  this, please give me the chance to make it right_) Superboy would be able to stop him, to save him from himself.

( _“All you need to do is turn around, and pretend you were never here.”)_

But…even though he  _knew_  how close to the line Tim was walking—

How. Fucking.  _Close_  they came to losing a Robin—

He didn’t go out and hunt Tim Drake to the ends of the Earth and drag him back.

No, Dick Grayson pulled the net away, and let him keep  _falling_.

And the man he is in the here and now, in this dust ball of a city, the man that’s already had more to drink in this one sitting than he’s had in the last few  _years_ , is a man that’s had plenty of  _time_  to realize the backlash of decisions he made with the best of intentions.

His eyes, face, wet with pointless grief and mourning—pointless because he’d thrown away the best thing in his life in so many years, treated it like  _garbage_ , bitten it until it  _bled_.

Tim’s expressions, the hurt, the pain, the realization, the discomfort being in the Manor, in the Cave, anywhere  _near_  him—and Dami’s constant stream of shit-spewing in those days, the “new” Robin with a sharp tongue and tendency to make you bleed with more than just steel.

( _And fucking **Jason**  again: “I bet he helped you do it, yeah? Bet he was riiiight there with you saying it, too. Out with the old, in with the new. Since you ain’t got the cape, maybe you’s should just hit the fucking road. Make some  **room**  for the next in line.”)_

He’d been so busy setting up his network to be the new Batman, Dami’s cuts had gone right over his head, he’d figured Tim would never take the kid  _seriously_ , would never let Dami  _shake_   _him_  like that, but… the new Robin, the blooded son, was given everything taken away from Tim, so why not  _believe_  he didn’t have a  _place_  in their  _home_  anymore?

Hours and hours on his laptop, watching old footage, listening to the taunts and torments—watching Tim’s face on the black and white camera when Dami walked out in Robin’s tunic, and the stark, painful  _realization_  right there while Dick’s back was turned, while Dick wouldn’t even  _look_  him in the  _eye_.

( _“You think he needed a written **invitation**  to get the fuck out?”)_

Almost two years.

It had taken Dick Grayson almost two  _years_  to finally  _see_  what really happened—what he  _let_  happen to a seventeen-year old boy that sacrificed for their Mission, the boy that lost everyone, and Dick didn’t even give him time to mourn before he took the last of it away.

His fist is clenched so tight around the t-shirt it aches.

All things  _should have_  hover in the dark corners of the room.

 _“I can’t be Nightwing, but you can still be Flamebird. Timmy, Dami needs something to keep him on our side. If we don’t give him an anchor, he’s going to run back to Ra’s and be the next Demon’s Head. Bruce’s son is going to be a supervillain. If we can give him Robin, if **we**  can make him part of the family whether Bruce is here or not, we can save him. I know we can. Be my partner, be my Flamebird. Help me, Tim. Please, help me._”

So

Easy.

It would have been  _so easy_  to save them both; if he’d taken enough time to  _think_  it through, to realize  _both_  of them were dangerously close to the edge, to see how  _both_ of them needed  _saving_. At the time, Dick had every tool needed in his bag of tricks to save them  _both_ ; he hadn’t. He made a  _choice_  and hadn’t even  _seen_.

If he would have thought of it as Bruce’s  _two sons_  needed saving.

He had every capability, every  _reason_  to save them  _both_. But at the time, his vision had narrowed on Damian Wayne, Bruce’s legacy, to make sure that kid wouldn’t fall by the wayside, and in the worst span of decision-making  _in his life_ , he made the sacrifice play, choosing Damian over Tim rather than choosing them  _both_.

The tumbler in his hand groans in protest because his fist is so very  _tight_ , and the brief moments in the Cave when Dick saw Tim without the mask, after a year of radio silence while the fear and worry rode him for the third Robin that  _sacrificed_  selflessly, that knew no bounds, the culmination of his narrow view came to a sick, sad fruition.

From the second he swooped out of the night to save Tim from death by window to the finality of another window in that dirty tenement building closing in his face, Dick Grayson can  _see_  the epiphany Tim came to in the Manor’s kitchen almost two years ago.

_How could he have fooled me this long in believing I was really part of everything? How could I have been so stupid? How could I not **see**  it before—Replacement, stand-in, placeholder…_

And the agony in Dick’s chest expands into a cold fist dead center, weighing him down with failure upon failure since he drove the man he loved to the brink of suicide.

_He gave himself to me and this is what I gave him in return._

He’s so deep in recriminations, aching for all the stupid choices, reliving his  _sins_ , that he doesn’t hear the knock on the window. When it slides up, when Clark as Superman flows in with cape fluttering behind him, Dick hides his face in the t-shirt, gets the hint of Tim’s scent like he used to when he’d bury his face in the juncture between the neck and shoulder or right in the niche of his hip, and  _he’ll never have that again—he threw all of it **away**_ …

Clark just sits beside him on the terrible hotel bed, wraps Dick up in both arms like when he was a ten-year old scrapper of a kid, and lifts the grown man into his lap, rocking him gently.

And Clark holds  _tight_  because he  _knows_  how the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions ( _should have made him feel like family, shouldn’t have just let him **go** , he  **is**  of the House of El)_, and he  _knows_  making bad choices for what seem to be the right reasons at the time. He  _knows_  how to cause irreparable damage to someone that didn’t deserve it, someone that would bleed for their cause. He know the pain when you lose something so precious, and you don’t even  _realize_  until it’s…gone.

## X.I [Ōrāre:](http://iphoenixrising.tumblr.com/post/151713680902/no-home-for-dead-birds-x-part-i-%C5%8Dr%C4%81re)

_The path is obscured, darkness overtakes the signs, shadows bite with jagged teeth to pull you back._

_The broken wing will never mend completely, the fall will kill it regardless_

**

60:45:01

It’s always  _there_.

The failures. The recriminations. The  _never-should-haves_.

It’s part of his current consistency. Rote.

When sleep deprivation finally hits, he can get two, maybe three full hours before his subconscious doles out as much as it thinks he can realistically  _take_.

The images cross and cut for whatever fucked-up reason. Sometimes he’s still wearing the tunic, sometimes Alvin Draper, sometimes Red X, once and a while he’s Red Robin, but not often enough to really  _believe it_.

In this one, Jean-Paul Valley is holding him up by the throat with those razor fingertips, ready to drive them through armor and Kevlar to sink into the meaty pulse in his chest; when he blinks, it’s Nightwing sneering, holding him at arm’s length while his feet dangle helplessly. When he swings to wrap his legs around the arm and throw, trying to keep from suffocating, it’s a younger Jason Todd right after the explosion—a mess of gore and rage. He spits blood while he laughs that high-pitched echo of insanity and the white bone in his jaw glints with mad design. When he pulls himself free, throws, tries to  _breathe_ , it’s the real Robin, sneering down at him because really,  _why the fuck are you still here again?_

The same pain from taking a sword to the spleen is right there between them because Robin’s short sword is just the thing for the job, and just,

“Why  _the fuck_  did it take you  _this_  long?”

“I did not want Grayson to see how pathetic you really are.”

 _Oh_.  _Not like he’d give a fuck anyway, right?_

And the real world breaks through the dream as his knees give out, Robin’s domino mocking his bare face and street clothes because  _he was never—_

Tim Drakes wakes up after a little over three hours. His back and neck immediately protest because he’s still squeezed inside a large computer bank against one wall of the bottom floor. He’s hunched over, encased in wiring, circuit boards, and other parts holding the mainframe together. The soldering gun is a few feet over there—so he’d moved at some point to lean against the back wall deep in the guts of the terribly calibrated supercomputer.

Well, not surprising, really.

And the echo of what woke him is a voice from right outside the panel he’d removed to climb in the first damn place.

“Found him!” Is Gar’s victory bellow, those green eyes peering into the dimness, only highlighted by small lights of the operating system. “I totally  _win_  this time _,_ kay? Not like with the last laser tag battle.   _That shit_  was cheating and I still have a grievance.”

“Noted.” Bart peeks around, apparently kneeling while Gar just looks upside down from being bent over at the waist (and he’s taller now, almost as tall as Tim, broad, older; he and Cassie are  _leaders_ ).

Both fists grip into masses of wires, metal, and components, something to ground him because  _dammit_ , he really shouldn’t  _be here anyway—_

“Tim?”

And even though Bart’s had the prosthetic for a few years now after Deadshot tried taking out his knee, he still favors the old injury, putting his good knee inside the bank first. You know, in case they need to pull out a  _rescue mission_  or some shit.

He swallows, eyes moving constantly, from Bart’s neutral expression to Gar’s upside-down arched brows to the damn place he was trying to mount another port—

And his chest  _aches_  with sudden, terrifying claustrophobia; it takes a few seconds of breathing out slowly, but he doesn’t automatically shove himself back against the wall, to get  _away_.

“…awake now, all good.” He closes his eyes, putting himself back in the dark. Things are better there (and it’s fucked  _up_  how that never  _used_  to be the case).

“Tim—”

“The system is a mess. It’ll take time—” that’s what he has now— _time_.

“ _Hey_  man—”

“It’s  _fine_. I’ll take care of it. Just—I just need  _time_ —” not really. He already has it in  _fucking **spades**._

“ ** _Tim_**.” Bart has the other knee inside now, one hand held out, but the new instinct is to duck, to back away. It was… never like that with Bart before—the original instinct, the  _real_  one, is to lunge forward, grab that hand and  _pull_ , get him out of the way of baddies, make sure he didn’t get hurt again. The old urge was to get  _closer_.

Nope. Left  _that_  train a while ago, didn’t he? “I said I’ll  _fix it_ , okay? I have to—”

_Some things can’t **be**  fixed. Those that  **can** , need to be, whatever can function at full capacity needs to be repaired, functional, ready. He needs to make sure they have as much as they can get… He can’t leave them helpless. That can’t happen again._

And in the face of Bat-stubbornness (not to mention the disturbing after-effects of the past two years), Bart Allen has no qualms cheating like an asshole— _nope_ , he’s fucking shameless in regard to one Tim Drake and one Conner Kent. The years haven’t changed  _that_  shit.

To reach out, to  _try_  and breach the gap, his tone drops, warms, takes on a whole different time and  _space_ , “Tim,  _babe_.  _Look. At. Me._ ”

And yes,  _yes_  that does a Ctrl + Alt + Delete to end previous processes, to make Tim Drake look right up at his ex-significant other and best friend, trying not to choke on his breath and the fucking dredges of his  _life_  still tight around his neck. Fuck, the weight is enough, isn’t it? Drowning must be a  _shit_  way to die.

Slowly, Bart raises the one hand again, holds it out,  _waits_.

“C’mon, babe. Made you fresh coffee. You’ll need it before you start working again. I mean, we’ve met, right?” Fingers wiggle just enough, and whatever power Bart Allen used to have over him is apparently still a  _thing_  because (really, just ingrained muscle memory) he’s reaching up to slide his torn, bloody hand into the offered one, hesitant, but  _still_.

Bart’s fingers are warm, closing around his gingerly because of the knuckles, causing a hard beat of his heart against his ribs, and stupidly, because he just really can’t  _fucking help it_ , he almost pulls his hand back, moves away further  _back_  into the dark.  

But, in some ways, it’s like they used to be when Bart could see right  _through_  him and into the pounding at his temples and the worn, wary, weariness of every thought, every movement. After a bad fight, a bad  _night_  in Gotham, Bart always  _knew_  somehow. The first to interject himself into Tim’s aftermath and force the human to  _act like it_. Food, sleep, bandages and stitches, whatever really.

He tightens his grip and pulls, leading Tim out of the huge system and back into the open air, refusing to play with the kid gloves anymore. So maybe he  _did_  forget how Tim needed to be  _handled_ sometimes,  not an inch of rope to hang him, no space to  _hide_. He gives himself a mental smack because he should have picked up on the majority of it from the last few months of playing “ _Catch the vigilante.”_  All the old ticks and tendencies are right there for him and Conner to see; the changes from his ordeals only make those aspects more pronounced, so naturally he’d pull  _away_  as far as he realistically  _could_.

Conner is the guy that hates to  _push_  when Tim gets all up in his head; waits until he can see something  _tangible_  before he starts making a fuss. Bart, though, Bart is the one that kept all three of them together and  _functioning_  okay? Without him, Tim ( _Rob_ ) would have kept working himself into a goddamned  _Bat-coma_  or some shit while Conner pined after him like a fucking loser from afar (and yes, the old Superboy body suit and ‘hawk were attractive as hell, but Rob would never have realized you were totally  _hot for him_ , like  _ever_ ).

And Tim is taller now—enough that the last Robin tunic he’d ever worn would probably look  _hilarious_ (but then again, he’d barely fit in the Red Bird when he took it out for the last time, right before he shoved it off the side of the cliff at the Manor when Dick had been asleep and Dami had been at school. Fuck  _yes_  it  _hurt_ , but really, it’d never been  _his_  anyway)—but it was all subjective. He hadn’t noticed it until he’s looking down a little further than usual at Bart’s cocky half-grin, more jarred here in their new place than at the shit tenement.

He sucks in a breath, probably to try something smart and logical to get around the fact he’d been having nightmares in a goddamned computer when Bart just reaches up enough to lay his palm on the back of Tim’s neck and grip with firm insistence that he  _shut the fuck up_  and do what he’s asked.

But the touch is just— _better times,_ back when he was the  _real thing,_ you know, _**Robin**_.

And it’s been a while since he was that guy, the guy they  _knew_ , the guy they  _trusted_. He’s not  _that_ Robin, maybe he never really was. (Wouldn’t they just  _love_  to realize everything from back then had just been a lie? It would make sense since they chose  _him_ —but fuck,  _why?_  Just another stand-in, asshole, a  _place-holder_ ).

Bart is smiling up, soft and genuine; it doesn’t change the fact all this a terrible idea. He shouldn’t make promises he can’t keep; shouldn’t be here making them do the same old  _stupid_  shit—pulling him out of work to do things like eat and sleep. He’s not their responsibility, he’s not their fucking team mate, their lover, and considering where’s he’s been in the past year, he’s barely their  _friend_.

This is all  _wrong_.

Regardless, Tim shudders under the hold on his neck, eyes falling half-mast; he’s an asshole, a selfish  _bastard_  because he doesn’t step  _back_.

“Bart,” is hoarse because his chest is heavy, and he’s with them in their own place like when he was part of something  _better_  and dammit, they came looking for him. Of anyone in the community, the original five of them should have turned their fucking  _backs_  and kept moving forward.  

Knowing what is probably going to happen once their place is full tilt makes it easier, more  _important_ , to pull back, to pull  _away,_ and he needs Bart to  _understand_  that.

 _(At this juncture, I don’t expect to be **kept**. It’s fine, I  **get**  that shit now._)

“Yeah, babe,” and Bart’s eyes are warm and brown and soft. “It’s all right.”

Helplessly, a harsh breath blows out of him in the face of Bart’s gentle, genuine  _happy_.

Gar silently, gently bows out of the underground telecommunications room, already thumbing a quick text since he is  _well aware_ how to handle such a situation (and even his old protocols might have to change because Rob isn’t  _Rob_  anymore. He’s a lost regular guy, just like Dick was all those years ago—he needs a  _name_  and maybe just having  _that_  would unfuck some of the broken written all over that guy’s face).  Gar doesn’t close the door because,  _dude why bother?_  and like clockwork (or whenever there’s even an  _indication_  of a Tim sighting in the last few months), Conner is just  _right here, man_ , looking down at Gar with a quirked brow.

The green meta sighs, pulls a frowny face, and jerks his head toward the open door. No words needed. Sure, they’re trying to get all the necessary shit up and running, trying to get names and all that superhero stuff,  _but_  only one thing is taking fucking  _precedent_  right now. No one needed to spell it out, seriously.

“Thanks, man,” Conner walks past him like a normal bro.

Gar gives a wave on his way to the staircase, he gives a little hop, the  _change_  taking over his body in the span of a breath. He flaps his wings, shaking them a little. With a hard flap, he’s strafing  _up_  on the way to the Communal Floor to let Cassie, Miguel, and Rave know the game is over, and  _yes_ , he totally  _won_.

Conner Kent (for the moment), stands with a forearm braced on the door frame. Really, of  _course_ they’d find Tim here. It’s like a Nerdtopia with just the right amount of  _what the fuck were you thinking when you **bought**  this junk?_ Tim could overwork himself to his heart’s content.

And yes, he catches the torn knuckles on the dominant hand; you know,  _super_  and such.

“Found ‘im,” Bart doesn’t let go,  _nope_. He’s known this paranoid asshole  _for a minute, okay?_  And if he takes his hand away right now, Tim is going to be  _dust in the wind_. Just  _poof_. This game of tag is no longer cool; it’s Tim trying to put his world back together and getting himself  _fucked up_  in the process.

He needs to be grounded.

He needs to be  _needed_.

He needs to save people, to have something  _better_  to give himself over to (and, well, the team had the  _talk_  about facing a Tim Drake, Super-villain, possibility. No, just how about  _no_ ).

And as the others are already well aware: when the guy with the plan is at his  _breaking point_ , you give him the evidence and let him work out the path from there. You keep to the side, so he always has something to keep him motivated, directed. You support him while he supports  _you_.

“He’s working on getting us up and running. Break time, though, for sure. My gumbo is getting  _better_ , okay?”

Conner held up both hands palm out, “so,  _so_  totally good, Tim. But! You can judge it for yourself.”

The muscles under Bart’s hand gets  _tight_ , those eyes moving from Bart to Conner and back, gauging,  _planning_  in a way that makes both meta feel like complete and utter  _failures_  as best friends (once, when he was  _Rob_ , he could  _trust_  them, he could  _talk_  to them). And they  _see_ it; Tim works the jagged edges of who he is now back into himself, trying to solidify in front of them. He can’t be Robin anymore, so he’s trying for something  _else_.  Worst case scenario, it’s something they don’t want to see the future of.

“Well, coffee is ready and we can talk about how much wiring we’re going to have to replace.” Bart tactfully fills in, and of course, both metas subtly notice the tension bleeding out of Tim’s shoulders at the mention of work. Yup, some things never change, and that meant at least  _some_  of their old ways of cheating the Tim Drake system might work while they try finding new actions around his embedded protocols (read as:  _get him back_ ).

“Did you get enough to give everyone a rough estimate?” And Conner grins down at his other best friend, his former lover, “I mean, it’s an  _old_  place, but it seriously has potential, Tim. I’m totally rocking it out here.”

With a breath, the ordinary human rattles off a complex number per square inch, none of it hiding how the veins in his temples throbbed or the fact he couldn’t look either of them in the eye for longer than a second or so. Instead, his gaze is drawn over shoulders, slightly off to the left, somewhere  _else_.

 _(When are you going to **say it** , not Rob anymore_)

“Good to know what we’re working with. Okay! Then it’s food and coffee time,” Bart interjects with a hum, “then you can get back to it.”  _Maybe._  His fingers move in circles, working to rub at the knots of tension; Conner just winds an arm around Tim’s waist, pulling all of them out of the telecomm room. He completely ignores the tenseness in the shorter man’s back and shoulders, refuses to give up the hold. Just like the first time around when he got to know the stern-faced vigilante and figured his shit out; don’t give him the option, do what you need to do.

“Food is good. We seriously need to  _feed_  you, man. You weigh less than Rave.”

“No joke. And you?  _Suck_  in the kitchen by the way.”

Tim swallows, stiff between them ( _and it used to be so good, so **right**  to be in the middle of them while they walked, while they fought, while they flew, while they planned their next moves; shit, it used to be just as good to be on the right side or the left one_  _too)._

And something so painful, so familiar, something that never should have  _hurt_  like this bubbles up in his chest, gives him the wind to voice, “Sorry, no recipe books in my utility belt.”

And of course they laugh at him with soft features and bright eyes, trying to get the point across to him without having to really  _say it_  out loud (since, well, only  _one_  of them runs like hell when the  _talk about feelings_  time comes to fruition—and he’s just  _slightly_  an asshole).

They do manage to get him into the elevator, pressed between the heat of their bodies and hum of powers, a hand on his neck and an arm around him, subtle but firm support, and it’s a throwback to their days as friends before  _more_. Jostling each other, hanging on after a bad fight to confirm  _relatively not dead_  and  _owfuck but not fatal_.

And as much as he  _wants_  to pull the hell away, to distance himself all over again (because he’s  _not the same guy_ , there’s a Robin out there for them), he refuses to make his body move for it. No quick duck and dodges, no excuses. He allows himself to exert enough force to maintain his current position, fighting gravity slightly and without real purpose.

His mental clock is still ticking down while the newly regulated elevator hums gently as it rises; the plan is still to make this new HQ ( _nest… fuck, no, dead bird, remember?)_  fully capable of keeping his old team safe is a go. But, the countdown works in his mental processes; he has until 0:00:00 to be  _gone_ , to find another new city, to keep  _moving_  past the lies and deceptions, to try piecing himself back together again, to keep a dark suit and no name, to be what he should have been all along—a soldier in the good fight.

He can let Bart and Conner have this for a while, just until it’s time to pick up again.

**

The knock is gentle, oddly  _timid_.

With no answer, Damian Wayne silently nudges the door a crack and peers through—Grayson is lying with his back to the door and front to the window of his room in the Manor ( _bigger_  than the one he’d had as a child, the one in which Damian now resides). The glint of scars marring him from his years of vigilantism are a reminder of Grayson’s dedication to the Mission, his unwavering  _faith_  in the fact that all they do is for the  _good_ , for the  _right reasons_.

It has become enough for Damian Wayne to have a bit of faith himself.

In the two years of dedicating himself to learning, to  _becoming_  Robin, the youngest of the Bat family has taken much of Dick Grayson’s teachings, his indomitable will, and attempted to change himself, to  _move_  in the right path. Father had entrusted his secrets to Grayson at a young age, had seen something worth keeping, worth instilling trust; given time, Damian could understand why.

Dick Grayson had proven himself to be willful, arrogant, and annoying—along with loyal, dedicated, and ethical. His best qualities only underlined the less favorable to make even his aggravating characteristics work in his favor. However, in the beginning, Damian  _despised_  him; Father’s first “son,” the first to earn Father’s respect enough to be deemed  _partner_.

His distaste, his outright scorn for the man became lighter, less  _important_  once they believed Father was well and truly dead.  At the time, Dick Grayson was his last living link to Bruce Wayne, the most deeply embedded root in the tree (Drake, however, had stood for opposition, possessing something that should have been given to the true,  _blooded_  son).  Grayson had taken him as a partner, had, in turn, imbibed him with the same  _faith_. He would never admit it—not even with his last breath—but that trust meant  _everything_. Being a part of his Father’s legacy, permitted to take a place within the ranks of the Batman’s world, it had given him the connection he needed to able to properly mourn, to move  _forward_  within the tragedy.

Eventually, as Grayson’s Robin, he had come to respect the man despite his penchant for inappropriately timed jokes and irritating tendency to  _hug it out_. Rather, all his quirks and inconsistencies made him that much more human—more human than Damian Wayne had ever himself been.

As foolish as it was then and is  _now_ , he wishes to dig his hands into these weaknesses, to make himself more like Grayson, more  _human_. Openly weeping at the sight of his Father  _alive_ , immediately regretting his inability to tell Drake a simple “ _thank-you”_  for not giving up regardless of everything against him, all of it an indication that Damian may be achieving that goal, slowly yet certainly.

“Morning.”

Damian slips into the room, eases the door closed behind him, leaning back against it.

Richard had spoken while still facing the window.

“Pennyworth told me you returned last night.” The youngest begins in careful measurement; he is aware of where his former partner had gone, and in some strange turn, had hoped him to be successful.

In regards to Timothy Drake, his deeds back then had effectively tarnished his honor, even though it had taken  _time_  and almost two years’ worth of living as a Wayne ( _as Robin_ ) for him to be able to  _see it_. The advantage he had taken of Grayson’s very nature to further drive Drake out of the Manor, the obvious revelry he took in rubbing his predecessor’s face in his lineage and worthiness to own the mantel of Robin. Those actions were  _beneath_  him, tainted the good works he had been trying to do, to make up for his life as a member of the League of Assassins.

Six months after Drake left the Manor, his things gone from his old room, Damian had come out of the Cave to find Grayson sitting on Drake’s empty bed, looking years older, arms tight around himself. It began then, the doubts flitting across his consciousness that perhaps he had done Grayson a disservice by subtly pushing Drake further from the Bat family, by reiterating Drake  _had no place here_. More time, more learning, more fighting, more weight as the R on his chest became a culmination of all of those who wore it before him as well as his attempt to make it his own. Time spent reading over the case files of Gotham’s worst nights, of taking in the words and actions of Tim Drake, of gaining insight to the young man that essentially made Robin an entity unto itself instead of simply an extension of the Bat.

As it is,  _sacrifice_  is necessary to achieve greatness. Mother and Grandfather had no qualms being certain he  _understood_  this, believed it down to his bones. Going through the events of Drake’s career as Robin, it began to be  _easier_  to understand the boy behind the tunic—to gain perspective in the sacrifices that had been made to maintain the role of Robin.

And yet, Damian had known nothing of it. Had taken that young man’s sacrifices and spit on him without regard, without acknowledgement.

His honor would be tarnished until he could right this mistake.

Somehow.

When Grayson remained unmoved, Damian takes a few steps in, satisfying himself by taking the chair at the messy desk, eyeing the familiar Haley’s Circus posters and memorabilia adorning the walls. Things Grayson had left when he moved back into an apartment in the city to allow Father his time to work closer to the Bat again; as Damian notes, two books remain on the shelves. One spare Nightwing costume haphazardly in the open closet with a few t-shirts and sweatpants.

“I hope you were able to speak with him,” Damian allows tactfully.

Grayson’s head bows and the meaning is all too clear.

“It did not go well,” the young Robin does not make it a question.

The silence is very uncharacteristic. Grayson usually spews words like the raw sewage in Gotham’s underground. The change is bothersome (worrying).

“…Richard. He is still… angry?”  _Because of me_?

The older man’s spine flexes, curves in as if he can somehow protect himself from these questions. And Damian lowers his eyes, feeling dredges of Grayson’s obvious  _pain_. Since Father’s return and Drakes final departure from the Cave, Richard Grayson had been a shell of who he had been—as he no longer had the weight of all the Batman’s responsibilities crushing him, he could allow himself time to miss his former lover and partner, whom he had deemed  _equal_. As much as Damian had thought their relationship  _unnatural_  at the time, he could now understand how the two managed to balance one another; he is perceptive enough to have noticed the change in Grayson without Drake’s companionship.

A hand raises, extends slowly, fingers grip Grayson’s exposed shoulder, attempted to relay comfort and support that Damian still cannot give voice. This, his  _brother_ , his partner,  _his_  Batman, his…friend, was in such pain—pain no wound, no bruise, no fight could cause, and Damian is helpless against it.

“He…isn’t coming  _back_.” Softly, the voice cracking slightly, and a much bigger hand overlays his, squeezes just slightly.

A moment, a lance of panic through his chest—if Drake would not return to the family, to Gotham, how was he ever to regain his honor? How would Grayson be appeased, be able to truly  _move_  again?

“I would find him,” the words are fast, his mind working on what he could do to aid in the effort. For Grayson’s sake, for Drake’s, for his own. “I will speak to him, explain to him I—I was  _foolish_ , arrogant, I would apologize—”

The hand on his pats affectionately. “Richard,” Damian breathes out, exasperated. “Tell me where you have found him and I will follow. I will track him. We can go in the plane, Father will understand,  _anyone_  would—”

Another pat, another attempt to tell him his actions unnecessary.

“You were in mourning,” Grayson hesitates slightly, “and trying to keep your head above water. I think he might understand that? Where you were at the time… I’m—Dami, I’m the one he can’t forgive. He thinks… Nevermind. You’re too young for all that, but, yeah, it’s my fault. So, no, you don’t have to do anything, okay?”

But Damian can hear it in his tone, the edges breaking; this man who had been his support system, the eye of the storm, is trying to spare the youngest Bat his weaknesses (and yet, are they really? Or is his humanity rearing up again?).

Determined, Damian stands and nudges Grayson’s legs over, sitting on the mattress without removing his hand, giving his mentor something with which to ground himself. His grip tightens on the shoulder.

“We are…fallible creatures, Richard. That is the unfortunate bane of being human. Faced with all the sudden requirements of taking on the Bat should give you at least  _some_  justification. Drake deserves to understand the tasks ahead of you. Perhaps he is lacking all the facts, that possibility alone will intrigue him as Drake is a true detective. Let me  _talk_  to him, Richard. Tell me where he was.”

But the shoulder under his hand heaves with the sigh, “he’s…not ready yet. Someday maybe but not yet…” And finally, Dick turns his head, his blue eyes deep and dark with the depths of his recriminations. “But…it means a lot that you’d want to try, Dami. Thanks.”

And as much as he hates this, utterly  _hates it_ , Damian Wayne leans around to wrap his arms around Grayson, allows himself to be encompassed in the strength of his partner, gives as much solace as he is able.

“One day then.” He relents while Grayson folds around him, “one day, we shall do what it takes.” He refuses to accept this as a matter of course; he  _refuses_  to simply allow things to  _stand_.

**

A cell phone lights up on the floor Tim Drake is temporarily using. Miles Kelsey, VP of Drake Industries, leaves a somewhat frantic message in hopes the last remaining absentee owner of the company will finally answer. 

He isn’t holding his breath.

 

 

## X.II: Actum

It  _is_  and isn’t what he  _needs_.

The main point is  _recalibration._

So, start with what grounds him like nothing else can, reminds him of the beginning, when he seemed to do the right things. It’s the  _why_  behind the nomadic journey, trying to find somewhere that feels  _right_  again. Well, something  _close enough_  would do. So, to the streets, the fall back. The re-spawn point.

And New Orleans is really a place to get lost in, to look around in wonder, to find the niches and corners with something more than sight. His vigilante sense is going crazy, and he’s only explored one small section close to the new HQ, so it’s time to take a  _leap_.

When Cassie said she wanted him to evaluate and establish a semi-dependent network connection to their base, the first step is to know all the ins and outs of how the building and how it’s connected in the larger grid: find wire closets, reconnect so the supply is set on a redundancy (you know, incase  _bad shit_  falls on their doorstep—not just baddies, but a host of unpleasant weather conditions), tap into services with re-direction so their IP can’t be traced, etc., etc.

It’s a more complicated set-up since the team plans to stay mostly incognito in their new place; staying off the radar of villains and the superhero community alike.  When he asked about their obvious break from the JLA, Cassie had been stubbornly silent, coming back at him with, “what? Didn’t think you were the only one growing out of your  _skin_?”

He left it at that.

And from above the landscape, he can let his brain flex and relax, taking in data, processing automatically. As stupid as it  _is_  since, you know, he’s really here for a  _reason_ , his blown out synapsis still register the crucial things (dividing the five districts for consistent patrol, which rooftops would have the best vantage points versus the easiest to get to for that crazy  _vanishing_  thing vigilantes do, which would probably be slippery as  _shit_  when it rains) —like he might be a step closer to something, closer than he’s been to anything in years.

As much as he wants to  _fight it_ , to  _run_  (because, you know, he’s  _fine_  by himself,  _has been_ ), he’s drawn further down the rabbit hole at the sound of a muffled scream.

At least the jump kick hits  _right on point_.

His knee takes out a face with ease, and he’s turning to backhand the knife out of a hand, keeping his stance in front of the shaky victim—tourist, he notes the telling characteristics absently.

“What’s with the  _mask_ , freak?”

“Your mother loves it,” he deadpans darkly since, well,  _bantering_  and such.

And  _stupid_  is on the plate for tonight, the last one charging him with a yell, but he just  _rolls_  with it, catches the arms, steps out, uses the momentum to  _pull_  and  _throw_.

 _Super effective_.

The guy hits a column right outside  _Café Pontalba_ , out cold.

His mobile repeater is one of the few gadgets he carries now, an untraceable device with a pre-recorded message of  _fucking trouble over here_ —the programming tracked his location and dialed 911 with the details. He gives it the command and turns to the wide-eyed brunette staring up at him from one of the few shadows in the city (and  _no_ , he’s not thinking about how it’s completely  _different_  from the norm—operating in a city that is full of  _light_ , even at the darkest hours).

With both hands up in a  _not dangerous, ignore the beat-down behind the curtain_ , he moves to the right looking for—

Ah, he palms her phone, tossed away when the three assailants muscled her back in the alley, and takes careful, cautious steps closer, holding the Samsung out like an olive branch.

“The police should be on their way,” is the standard to anyone in shock after an attack, reassure them you’re a  _good guy_. “Tell them what happened, try to downplay me, okay?”

She blinks hard and is nodding up at him, shaken out of shock by  _police_ , “I—th-thank-you.”

She doesn’t reach for the phone, so he crouches to set it down and slide it across the pavement. She looks down at it and back up at him with wet, wide eyes. “Are you hurt? Do you need an ambulance?” While his eyes go over her trembling form from behind the whiteouts. Clothes torn and dirty, but he thinks—

“I’m—I’m okay. Y-You stopped them.” She whisper/screams back, and he gets that feeling, really.

“I’m glad I got here in time,” is all he needs to fill in, “do you want me to stay until the cops—?”

She moves, lunges for his free hand and grips hard, shoulders shaking with repressed sobs, “ _please._ Please don’t leave me alone.”

He’s blinking behind the whiteouts but slowly sinks down to sit on the rough, wet pavement, gripping her hand between his, thumbs in her palms. It’s a telling thing when he stays right there, just rubbing the back of her hand while she shakes apart, and feels an odd sense of  _déjà vu_  work up into his chest, spilling copper in the back of his mouth. Something about it, jumping down from the high roof, taking out the first one just with the force of the falling kick, the cloying rank of garbage from a broken down dumpster in the back, gripping wrought ironwork to dodge an oncoming knife, hits him in the base of the spine. It’s the same scene in a hundred different cities, a thousand different victims, a lifetime of being the opposing force between the good and bad, but this— _this…_

Something,  _something_  is here.

And he gives her hands one last squeeze while the sirens get closer before he gets  _ghost_ , hauling his ass up on the roof from the surprisingly sturdy iron fire escape (not like in New York where  _that shit_ was deadly in itself—a terrible vigilante curse, worrying more about shoddy building design than insane criminals trying to kill you).

And once he hits the roof, the nerve endings in his legs and back tingle while he’s looking out over the noise of  _life_ , the sounds swirling around the buildings and people, circling around all the way up to where he’s perched, making his skin  _itch_.

And it’s just like when he wore the other R—

( _Fuck_ )

No more angsty retrospect.

Instead, he  _runs_.

It’s not like Gotham with towering skyscrapers interspersed with old school Gothic designs, with thirty stories between you and the street, it’s not New York with garbage on roof tops and old bottles you might land on if you don’t keep your eyes open, it’s not San Fran with a little of both.

It’s something altogether different.

The flowing music comes from all sides even this late, musicians on the corners with cases open or battered hats out for a little something for their trouble. The smell of food hits him in the pit of his stomach, rolling around the perpetual empty space, actually making his mouth water while his lungs work and his chest stutters.

The leaps are farther in some spaces than others, but  _fuck it_ , the knee is going to be his downfall one day anyway.

And he’s deep in his own head, brain working on autopilot to gauge and estimate, to listen for the sounds of breaking glass or muffled screams, gun fire and twisting tin, all the sounds of the job.

This time, when he jumps, higher than necessary to clear the next roof, his heart gives a meaty thump against his breastbone, speeds up, leaps with adrenaline.

But  _that_  feeling…that belonged to  _Robin_.

( _Stop. It. Mother. Fucker.)_

He nails the landing even with the shaky thoughts and body starting to do this odd thing, to  _wake up_ when he had no  fucking  _clue_  it had been sleeping all this time…

He sucks in a deep breath, gets the taste of the city on the back of his tongue, rolls it around his senses while he stops holding  _back_  and put on another burst of speed, hitting the lip of the roof, putting  _power_  into his legs to make the next leap.

The wind in his hair, the domino, arm extended, back arcing, a dead bird in  _flight_.

And the only thing that could stop him  _now_ , is the flicker from the shadows when he lands it, slides on his knees, comes to hit feet without a hitch, more ready for a fight than he’s been in a long time.

Some things, though are just too good to be  _true_.

Because the Black Bat steps into the soft light reflected up, and her mouth quirks up in the smallest of smiles.

**

“Just  _how_  do you two keep doing this again?” Cassie asks with what everyone recognizes as false casualness. She’s irritated, probably because Tim is  _always_  going to have the extra contingency; the ones for ‘just in  _case;_ ’ the ones he pulls out when he should really be  _out_  of options. That guy anticipates way too many terrible possibilities (even if it had saved the former Titans on more than one occasion), and there are those  _times_  when his tendencies are nothing more than a pain in the ass.

Like now.

Raven, who had only seen fleeting glances of their former teammate appears nonplussed (reads  _irritated_ ), slouches further into the overstuffed couch on the Communal floor with her laptop balanced on her knees, already making a rudimentary assessment of the current systems array (to verify the system is still  _flawed_  and thus assuring he would return). The wireless is up and running (Gar is already installing the PS3 gaming system, looking  _chipper_ ), the Operating System installed, available are several applications used for various and sundry actions in keeping track of dangerous criminal organizations (she notices, however, the analysis tool for chemical compounds—the one Tim developed for them—has been upgraded. Interesting).

“To be perfectly  _honest_ —” Bart is feigning casual, slumped at the island while he stares down the old Impulse suit hanging on the back of the pantry door, ignoring the way it does and  _doesn’t_  feel right. Well, problem for another day.  

Conner, on the other hand, gives her a patient look and interjects before Bart can finish  _that_ thought, his ‘good boyfriend ESP’ going nuts, “he can come and go whenever he likes, Cassie. We’re not keeping him prisoner, you know.”

And c’mon, it’s not like he isn’t monitoring the location of that heart beat like the second Tim told just the two of them he needed the streets, stomach too messed up to eat, and they’d sent him out, watching him jump from the roof of their building.

Yes, he promised to come back, but a little incentive is always good to have in your back pocket.

“I’m not saying he is and you  _know it_ ,” she shakes a finger at him, “you know what my plan hinges on here—“

Because  _someone_  needed to make an attempt at getting Tim away from his solo vigilante career, from his self-imposed  _exile_  (and  _maybe_  Stephanie Brown had contacted her once Tim has stopped returning her texts and phone calls). Someone needed to make sure he wasn’t just killing himself moving from city to city after the JLA pretty much tossed him out of their Tower.

Once her contacts on the West Coast sent reports of the “nameless” travelling vigilante—one that was apparently going back to basics: no tech, no special weapons, no back-up. Like Tim had decided to separate himself from his old life completely, just cut all ties…

Including them.

“At the end of the day,” Gar starts slowly while he thinks, sitting down with his elbows on his knees; the PS3 logo pops up on the massive screen in front of them, “he’s going to make his own decisions about what he wants to do, and not based on what we  _have_  available. Our resources being below his standard isn’t going to do anything in the long run. If we’re serious about him staying—we have to give him a reason.”

“Exactly,” Cassie smirks, eyes slyly sliding over to where Bart and Conner sit at the island.

Gar and Rach exchange a knowing glance since, well, they’ve been doing this team dynamic thing with former Robins for, you know, a  _minute_  or so. And relationships? Sometimes aren’t strong enough to last through the type of life they lead. Kory and Dick hadn’t made it after all.

Raven finally speaks, supplements his observations, “we need data,” is her simple observation. “We will need the statistics on crime in the city; we will need our resources on paper; we will need the list of our foes as well as their capabilities versus ours. All this will need to be accessible to him—or rather, it should be somewhere he may be able to ‘stumble upon it’.”

And yes, she does quote fingers now. Gar thinks it’s  _progressive_.

“We shall give him answers to questions he does not yet realize he has and allow him to make his decision based on facts.”

To Raven, it is a simple matter of course. However, her teammates are staring. Rudely. Even Gar.

“I think I’m going to get some statistics together and start downloading all our data from the old Tower,” Cassie muses already thinking about how to set-up everything in a complicated mess, something very not  _Tim_.

“I’m on that train,” Bart gets himself up, stretches his back out. He loops an arm through Cassie’s already tugging her toward the elevator.

Kon stands up, also stretches, just enough that his spine should emit a low  _crack_ , well, if he wasn’t the  _invulnerable_  guy, that is. “I’ve got to grab the last of some things out of town, but I’ll be back soon. If anything happens, you guys comm me, okay?”

Gar waves him away with one hand, turns his attention back to the PS3 set-up screen. “All good, guy. We’ll keep an eye out if anything happens.”

“Thanks, Gar. See ya, Rave.”

“Hm. Do not be surprised if we have lured Tim back with something other than  _food_.”

“Yeah,” he chuffs on his way out, “ _work_.”

“No,” she counters softly at his fleeting figure, “a  _place_.”

**

And it’s a stupid thing, how he thinks he can bullshit  _Cass_  of all people, but isn’t it a  _telling thing_  on how successful he’s been with everyone else so far?

“I needed to scope out the possibilities,” he’s drinking the dark, potent coffee she’d brought him (a  _bribe_ , Cass, don’t think I don’t already  _know_ ) while she chews on a Po’ Boy and stares right at him with her usual unaffected air while she takes him in from head to foot after almost two years of his MIA routine.

And out of a lot of things he  _expected_ , Cassandra Cain, the Black Bat, showing up in the same city, was very  _not_  one of them. It would be perfectly  _logical_  if she wanted to stay away, to side with B and Dick and Dami—to stay with the  _family_. It’s why he had no contact with her or Babs after the fact. Honestly, why cause more of a rift in the Bats than strictly necessary?

Luckily, she doesn’t seem to hold a grudge since, well, he’s not broken or bleeding all over the place. Nice, really.

Their legs swing idly from five stories up on a more comfortable ledge than most and situated in the right kind of shadows to be the equivalent of a vigilante  _break room_  and shit. ( _And he’ll have to remember this roof for when he—for_ if _he might need to come back and unfuck whatever damage the team does to their system—who needs a stone gargoyle anyway?_ ). “I know what kind of city I need. Now, I just need to find it, I guess.”

Cass hums around her bite, the whiteouts up on the longer mask so he  _knows_  she’s watching him intently and that’s the  _point_. She makes him completely  _aware_  of the scrutiny. “Only penitent man shall pass,” in her soft, growling tone, like a feather against the ear, light and airy, weighted with  _intent_.

And, yes, at one time, when Cass first started speaking again, he joined in the effort with Dick to do everything  _possible_  to catch Cass up with ALL the movies, but Indiana Jones? Not one on his top ten.

“I don’t believe in God, Dr. Jones,” he deadpans, “and I don’t  _kneel_.”

“Depends,” she comes back mildly, “on  _what_  your God is,” and her eyes go down over his chest and to his crossed legs, taking in the nondescript suit, the few visible sections on his matte black utility belt ( _less mechanics and protections as if these things are inconsequential or undeserved)_.

He laughs a little because, well,  _point_. He’s been worshipping at the altar of the Mission for maybe just a few too many years (and look where the  _fuck_  it brought him).

“Okay, you got me,” and his whiteouts are up too, so she knows the dark circles are under his eyes (as per usual), “I’m doing  _fuck-all_ , really.”

The low noise from her throat calls him on it. Again.

 _Shit_.

“Well, what would you believe then?”

“A thing called the truth,” she replies after the sandwich is done, and half a bottle of fruit punch is devoured.

And his mouth opens to immediately give something  _else_ , some other kind of excuse or justification, something removed, something completely  _asinine_  so he doesn’t have to  _admit_  it—

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” falls right the fuck out, numbing him a little, “just trying to stay  _away_.”  _Because I can’t go **back**. There’s nowhere to go back  **to**_. And even if there  _was,_  would he  _want it back?_   _Would he want to deal with the hurt and rejection and abandonment all over again?_

Cass’s tiny, deadly hand grips his wrist  _tight_ , making him feel something other than  _pain_ , and their gloves slide together when she shifts down to thread her fingers through his and hold on to his hand. And it’s just like they’re back in the Haven again, picking up where Dick left off, trying so fucking  _hard_ to keep moving after the both of them  got knocked around by  _life_  for a while. Just the two of them splitting up to take either side of the city, patching each other up, watching terrible television, maybe even sometimes going to school when the injuries weren’t bad and the craving for  _sunlight_  was waaay past due.

It’s like the last few years melted away, like he was still  _Robin_  to her (or, well, more to the  _point_ , like he was still just  _something_ ).

Maybe even like he was still part of a family.

“Sorry,” he admits, while looking down at the drop to pavement because he’s more hoarse than he’s comfortable sharing, “you shouldn’t have—”

“Wrong,” she shakes their joined hands a little, “ _wrong_.”

“About?”

“Do know.”

“Ah, so I  _do_  know what I’m supposed to be doing, huh?”

The side of her mouth quirks up and Cass nods with a small smile, eyes twinkling in the night.

“You know, I’m  _also_  right about which candy bar is more superior,  _Heath,_  naturally, and also about which supervillain needs the coddling, and—”

“Need to stop running,” she interrupts the attempt of witty banter, her eyes dark and deep, and full of sympathy. “Pain will always catch up.”

He swallows hard, blinking rapidly. “I—“ and is that really  _his voice?_  “It’s okay,” he babbles, the same mantra he’s been telling himself all this time. “Really, it’s  _okay_. I just have to keep moving, I have to—“

Her hand squeezes his bones together, and the quirk to her mouth is telling enough  _you’ll need to break down eventually_.

Well, that day isn’t today.

“I’m not the same guy anyway, you know.” He tells her gently, “I’m not their Robin anymore.”

“Different now…is  _okay_.” And even with the cat-eye mask, her face is sincere about it. If anyone  _knew_ , could  _get it_ , it would be Cass.

“Not…it’s…” and he sighs, squeezes her hand in his own, leans over so he doesn’t have to look at her face, “when I thought Bruce was alive, I knew I would have to do things. Things Robin couldn’t  _do_ , you know? Well, not that it mattered, I wasn’t Robin anymore by then anyway, but I just—Cass, there’s more  _gray_  than there was two years ago. There were lines I crossed and—”

 _Which is why the Red Robin thing had to go_.  _If he was going to take a tainted name, then it would be smeared with his own choices and mistakes, not Jason fucking Todd’s._

She lets him ramble on about it, gesturing with his coffee cup. After a little while, when he gets to the part where the League of Assassins comes into play, and  _holy shit_  time commenced, she’s drawn her legs up, facing him on the ledge, propping her chin on them. At the worst parts, her hand gets tighter, fingers work the knots of his knuckles.

He keeps Dick’s visit to a brief, “I told him to leave.”

But she laughs at him for it because is he  _really_  the guy that lies to Batman?

Dawn is a few hours away and most of patrol worthless anyway, but he feels lighter than he has in—well, a long time. Cass is nudged against his side again and is perfectly positioned to be poked with his index finger until she gives in and tells him why she’s in New Orleans.

“He said to come home. When I did, he said to me  _Tim is lost somewhere, needs direction_. Said Tim cannot be the old Tim but also he does not know the new Tim.”

He gapes down at her a little (because  _why?_  He’s backed the hell away for a reason,  _B_ ,  _not your problem anymore_ ), but well,  _direction,_ right _?_

“So here you are?” And, yeah, it makes his chest just a little less  _empty_ , hollow.

“So here I am.”

“…we could have Skyped if you were busy, you know.”

It earns him a well-deserved punch in the arm.

“Some things should be done face-to-face,” she replies with a smirk and leans back against his side, yawning with obvious vindication. “Nice to get out of Hong Kong, too.”

He hums a little, looking down at her head against his arm, “you put four gangs under in less than six months. I  _heard_.”

And yup, she’s smirking again.

“Tiresome. Necessary. Crucial connections in the underground have been broken, and the strands will begin to unravel by the time I return.”

“Good things. I could make my way there once it’s time to make some knots. Or crochet? Knit? Hey Cass, let’s go knit some bad guys.”

Another arm punch, but Cass is already  _familiar_  with his odd sense of humor.

“Can take care of my own  _strands_ ,” is grumbled out while he grins like an asshole. “ _You_  take care of  _your_  strands.”

“Yeah,” he breathes, looking down at her with genuine affection. “So, what’s my direction then O Wise Compass of Justice?”

“Simple. All directions.”

 _What now?_  “Uh, what now?”

Without looking up from her comfortable slouch against his arm, one hand comes out, a finger pointing toward the direction of the Saenger Theatre, “north.”  In a perfectly balanced arc, her arm moves toward Perdido Street, “west,” and on to Lafayette Square, “south,” and a thumb hitching behind them to the mighty Mississippi, “east.” (And just  _how much_  comes in to those ports every day? Monitoring it is going to be a nightmare— _where the fuck did that thought **come from**?)_

“Next time I’m investing in a Magic Eight Ball,” he deadpans back, fighting down the gaining pressure in his chest, the momentum of Cass, the city, the team waiting back at their new HQ.

“Like it here,” she counters. “Good for the body, good for the  _mind_.”

And he gapes down at her, blinking, “how can you even  _tell_? This is my first night patrolling here!  _I_ don’t even know if I like it yet.”

“Saw it in how you were fighting. Clear. Calm.”

“That’s—”

“And,” now she does tilt her head back, looking up at him with all seriousness and control, “already knew. Where I was pointing.”

 _Oh_.

But the small smile cuts across her face, makes her softer than when they’d first met years ago, when she was so thin and tired, when she looked like the weight of the world was going to bare her down to the ground.

“Not home. Not yet. But, could be.”

And with that, a huge breath whooshes out of him, taking the starch out of his spine, making him slump down like a broken thing.

“Home,” and  _that_ , well…

“Your team.” She fills in, “ _home_. Black, white, gray. Inconsequential.”

And he blinks because his eyes are suddenly wet and hot again ( _has he really ever had one? A place that_ could be _home? The Manor, he knows, because_ fuck _it hurt so much to be cast **out**_ ); he jerks somewhat once he realizes what he’s doing, but fighting the strength in Cass’s hands when she grips his nondescript suit is something neither of them really  _wants_  to do. It’s been too long since he’s done this—sitting, talking, being  _okay_  for a minute, being okay with someone he  _cared about_ , someone that stood with him against the worst the bad guys could throw at them.

But, well, Cass is always the go-to when life takes a turn for the shockingly  _traumatic_ , right?

And with her quiet support right there, the last year and a half weighs him down like a concrete cape on his back and shoulders, like the changes he went through, like the man he is now, is someone that could only be made by  _breaking_  a good kid.

He’s not a kid anymore, and he sure as  _hell_  isn’t “good” ( _dead birds, right Jason?_ ); pragmatic, yes, good… well, no.

But Cass just shakes her head in frustration, lips pursed together. She eventually takes the small gloves off and cups his face with naked, dexterous fingers.

“Missed this,” she admits out of one side of her mouth, tilting his head down to look at her.

“Me too,” he replies thickly.

She hums a little, “visit then.”

And when he wraps his arms around her, when he  _holds on tight_ , she stays right where she is while he lets  _go_.

**

Staring at the shit entrance to their HQ still makes him  _itch_.

Yeah, something has got to be done about it. And it’s not like he’s doesn’t already have  _a list_.

Inside the thing, he’s thumbing his phone idly, deep in thought about how things are going to go from here. Welp, it’s a good thing he’s starting to make  _plans_.

Gar and Rachel are the only ones on the Communal Floor when the doors slide open, and he steps out, going right for the sink in the adjoining kitchen to get water in his system. He’s going to do the food thing soon too, sleep, well, he’d see.

With an exchanged glance behind his back, an agreement between them, they move from the overstuffed couch to take seats at the island behind him, Rachel’s eyes slightly narrowed on the generic black clothing, a simple coil of jump line attached to his belt, a few pouches with gadgets or surprise pellets, but…no armor, no Kevlar.

She blinks in realization. Blinks again.

BB yawns, propping his face up on one hand and idly thumbing through his phone.

“Looks like someone stopped a bunch of nasty bad guys last night, babe,” he remarks with one green brow raised, “seems like the days is  _saved_. Or night. Whichever.”

Refilling his glass from the tap again, Tim turns to put the counter at his mid-back and gives a wave while downing the contents.  _Ah, hydration_.

“Thanks for looking out in our city, guy, in case that wasn’t  _clear_.” Gar specifies, putting his phone down to make sure Tim knows he’s got their attention.

“No problem. It comes with the territory, vigilante and all,” he replies easily.

“Which is a totally banging lifestyle, dude, don’t get me wrong. But, there’s more  _out there_ , you know?”

Now he’s raising a brow, setting his glass in the sink. “Okay?”

Rachel sighs a little and he wonders if she still has that carnivorous beast dimension hidden somewhere in her magical bag of tricks. “Gar, honestly. Does not anyone realize he has yet to be formally  _asked?_ ”

And they both turn to look at him at the same time and  _oh_. Oh!

He’s grinning like an asshole because it just  _hit him_. These two finally hooked up while he’d been gone. It’s about  _fucking time_. Seriously, just how long can you  _pine_  without it being totally obvious? ( _Don’t answer that fanboy_ )

“Congrats,” he wiggles a gloved finger between the two of them, still grinning.

And Rach, Rachel Roth,  _Raven the Terrible_ , gets very  _pink_. Like in her  _face_.

Yup, now he’s covering up a laugh with a terribly obvious fake cough.

Gar just holds up their entwined hands from under the island, flashing a  _righteous, dude_  with his free hand.

“Which is not the point,” Rach hurries on ( _and don’t think I’m unfamiliar with deflection_ ). “The point  _is_ , we have created a position on the team for our own…information source. Someone to help maintain the necessary administrative tasks and also to set-up and maintain how we plan to continue doing what we are able for the world.”

“That’s pretty crucial to—“

“Do not tease me, Tim. I am not asking for candidates. Rather, the position was created with you in mind, as I’m sure you are already aware.”

Gar smiles lazily, “yeah, Cassie already showed you the digs, right? Totally for you, dude, if you wanna take the job. We have  _banging_  Medical b-t-w.”

“We hope you will agree to join us again.” Rachel fills in with her usual unruffled calm.

But, there it is. Cassie didn’t want to “pressure” him, but trust Rave and Gar to put all the bullshit aside, just asking him to  _come back_  to the team.

( _Home_ )

One hands fists in the glove by his side, Tim’s eyes dark, more so with the domino he’s still wearing. One without a name, without a city.

But Cass…well, she’s  _right_.

Direction.

He licks his lips before replying, “full disclosure. I’m not… _Robin_  anymore. Not just the costume or the name, but… I’m not  _that guy_. I learned to do things differently now, I’ve had to adapt. And if you guys are serious about this, making a team without anyone else backing you? Then there’s going to be a lot of gray areas. Things might get…dicey at times.”

And Garfield Logan can  _see it_. Just like he saw it in Dick Grayson after the R tunic was put aside like other childish things, and the nitty gritty of their world started to be  _real_. He can see the choices and regrets stamped all over Tim Drake’s face.

“Hey, guy, c’mon,” he keeps his tone low, soothing while he stands from the island, slowly makes his way to stand face-to-face with the younger, worn vigilante. He doesn’t stop himself from gripping Tim’s biceps, from looking down into those bright eyes that were dull with old pain and new realizations. “When those times come, we’ll be there, and we’ll do what we have to do  _together_.”

Sucking in a breath, looking from Rachel’s face back to Gar’s, something crucial in his chest seems to  _ease_.

“Okay,” he finally agrees through numb lips. “Count me  _in_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks for reading!


	5. Drabble: Conner Kent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conner is picking up his last box from the Kent's house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you that don't follow this on Tumblr, here's the short drabble (also with Cass)

He really doesn’t think about it. There’s no need to, choices have already been _made_.

Explaining to Ma Kent why he’s moving out was really heartbreaking; she had nothing to do with any of the events that lead to him giving up the name, taking the final step in ending whatever this fucked-up relationship he has with Clark. Really, he should have done it a long time ago, should have sat Clark down in the Watchtower and had “the talk” with him. You know, the I’m-your-clone-but-you-don’t-owe-me-anything-anymore with a little I’ve-got-my-own-way-now-so-you’re-free-of-responsibility. Kara probably would have thrown a fucking party or some shit.

Well, once she heard he gave up the pseud as well as the Kryptonian name, essentially removing himself from the House of El’s final records, she probably did anyway.

So by the time he’s back to Kent Farm to pick up the very last box, he doesn’t expect anyone to be there. Ma won’t want to see him, not now that he’s done what he has to do.

And it’s fine. Really. They gave him what he needed when he needed it, no matter what kind of abomination they thought he was (will always be, right Kara?), so he can at least be a bro and take his name out of their records, to move forward as someone new so they wouldn’t have to be ashamed their house was tainted with bad blood.

He’d come to terms with it all a long time ago (but it had never stopped him from trying to reach out-giving up the uniform was the last ditch…and well, he’d been right all along, hadn’t he?). The Bat had tried telling him once that Clark would come around, but Conner didn’t think even Bruce believed it totally.

None of the JLA did.

It’s okay, he’s got a team to have his back. He knows where home is now.

So he isn’t surprised the truck isn’t by the barn as normal, doesn’t bother breaking out the super senses when he just strolls across the porch and opens the front door. The last box is all he’s here for.

The bittersweet memories-good and bad times (like when Pa thought his ‘hawk was a disaster)-hit him harder while he stands in the entry way and just breathes.

It’s funny how, even though he knew, has always known, staying with the Kents was only temporary (and only because Clark asked them to put him up probably because he didn’t know what else to do at the time), had known they were doing it out of obligation- this is still the closest thing to a family home he’d ever had. Even knowing it wasn’t real, it was still…

His fists clench in the unexpected pain in his chest, the blurry, wet quality to his eyes.

But if anything, the meta-human known as Conner Kent is versatile, adaptable. He’s one that can keep moving regardless of the fallout.

He takes the steps slowly, quietly, hand skimming over the banister. In the attic loft, the bed has been stripped, the walls bare, only the threadbare carpet and rickety chest of drawers are all that’s left. Well, that and his memories (dude, time to go).

He snags the box, stupid things in it, really. The set of gloves Cassie gave him one year (even though his hands couldn’t physically get frostbite), his own set of Monopoly BB got him when he figured out how much Conner enjoyed the hell out of it, the set of marbles Guardian had given him from way back in the day, two broken down fishing poles (and Bart is going to be stoked because they’re new place is prime fishing territory). But…

He pulls out the black t-shirt Ma must have laid on top.

The shield faces him when he unfolds it, holds it open. And that wave of pain hits him again, like a speeding train when he’s still kind of hungover after kryptonite poisoning ( _it never should have been yours anyway_ -fuck _that_ shit). Gently, carefully, he folds it back the way Ma always does and puts it down on the bare-bones bed.

Final box in his hands, he could have gone out the window and flown away, but no, something in him wants the last walk down the staircase, pretending he’s just going to school or out to do chores with Pa and-

“Kon-El,” is said gently, but the meta-human still jerks with it, spins on his heel, almost drops the box.

In the hallway moving down to the kitchen, Clark and Kara are right there, civvies instead of suits-which makes his brow arch.

And it’s a terrible thing that he goes tight all over, the instinct to fight kicking in more than usual.

“It’s just Conner, remember?” Comes from him, oddly enough, and he feels slightly numb, slightly nauseous. He’d never expected them to try fighting him here of all places, or finish whatever final ritual they needed to take him out of the El family or whatever this could possibly be about.

“Conner,” Clark corrects almost gently, and Kara…flinches?

He sighs unconsciously, wondering what the fuck he’s done now.

“This is the last of it,” he rushes out harshly, “then I’m gone, okay? I’ll stay away if that’s why you’re here.”

And he would. It would suck so hard if he could never see Ma again, but he’d do it to keep the peace with her real family.

“What?” Clark’s eyes go wide behind his glasses, and Kara blinks, still looking like she ate something extremely bitter. “That is not-” and there’s both hands, palm up in the totally not dangerous kind of way- “why we came here. Can we just talk? Just for a few minutes?”

“We left the Tower. You’ve got the name. I won’t use it again,” he replies immediately, “what else is there to talk about?” He does an eye slide to the front door, making it a pointed look.

But that-

That’s Clark and Kara coming down the hallway and Conner’s eyes just get bigger (because Ma is going to seriously get mad if they super fight in the house), drawing himself up to his full height unconsciously.

Clark just comes right up to him, almost touching the box he’s holding and looking down with something…different. Something that might even look a little like remorse?

That…would have been nice once-upon-a-time.

Nowadays, he has better things to do with his time than placate these two.

His eyes narrow, one hand comes up in a hold it right there gesture, stopping the two Kryptonians in mid-step. “Look,” and _it’s a done deal, Clark,_ “I’m not heading to the dark side or anything. I’m staying with the good guys. I’ve gotten everything out of the Kent’s house, and I won’t come back. You’ve got the name now, and Jon is going to rock the fuck out of it. Not like either of you were very happy when I took it on anyway, right? Like abomination and shit,” and maybe his eyes slide to Kara with that because, you know, he got it the first time she said it, “so there, you’ve got it back. No harm, no foul.”

And even though he’s a guy with super strength, the box transferred to one arm starts to get heavy, feeling like his life up to now is right there balanced on one hip. But, at least his tone is level, so he gets a thousand points for it. A few thousand actually because why the fuck are they here?

Even though they didn’t like him, didn’t really want him in their family, he didn’t think they’d feel the need to watch him fucking leave.

“It’ll break Ma’s heart if you don’t come back,” Clark chokes out.

“I think,” Kara just jumps right in, taking a halting step closer, “I think we’ve just expected things to _happen_ , Conner. We just…took it for granted you’d see where we all are now. I mean, we’ve fighting on the same side for _years_ and those thing I’ve said to you were cruel and—and _wrong_. And I’m _sorry_. I’m so, so _sorry_.” And yes, maybe she’s getting a little teary thinking about the young man that gave his _life_ in the fight against Prime, that made the ultimate sacrifice because that’s what heroes _did_. She licks her lips, blinking rapidly, and breathing out. Clark lays a comforting hand on her back, thinking about doing something very similar for a certain vigilante when choices basically ended an era of young superheroes working with them as a team.

Conner, however, is _staring_ and at a complete loss for how to handle this.

At all.

Can he just _go now_? Please?

Clark seems to sense the awkward and interjects, smiling weakly, “we came here to ask if you would mind just…keeping in touch. Just let Ma or one of us know you’re…that you’re okay. Nothing about the team or the _life_ , but just _you_ , Conner.”

Kara seems to have collected herself, “and we wanted you to know, with or without the shirt or the name, we’re still going to stand beside you if or when you need us. You don’t ever have to fight _alone_ , okay? That’s all.”

Now he’s _concerned_. Is this like that movie Tim showed him one time? The one with the Pod People or whatever? The change-up is messing with (not that he’d _ever_ admit it) his emotional equilibrium. Sure, they’d worked together enough in the last few years to be called the “Super Family” by the media, but he hadn’t really _believed_ in it (hoped, imagined, yes, but _really_ believed?).

“And if,” Clark gets serious just that fast, Superman behind Clark Kent’s glasses, “you need somewhere to _go_ , you can always come to us. If something happens, whatever it is, there will always be a place for you.”

But the words, the _sentiments_ , behind it all make Conner Kent _flinch_. During the ‘hawk days, he would have sat in a room full of kryptonite for _hours_ to hear all of this, _any_ of this—he would have given a limb just be told he was part of something, not a mistake of science, a crime against nature itself. The _him_ of those days would have dropped the box and gone to them, maybe tried to hug it out, maybe would have thanked them for including him, for _caring_.

The him of _today_ is older, wiser, and learned from a certain former Robin about being a realist.

So instead, he shifts his box under the crook of his arm and half turns toward the door, looking out into the fields across the road from the house—field he ran in, fields he helped till, fields he’s leaving behind for more important things.

“I appreciate it, really. I’ll keep it mind if something ever happens. The team is off-limits though. I’m not going to spy on anyone or anything, so that’s out. But…I mean—” he rubs the back of his neck with his free hand, feeling like a dumb ass to say it, “ditto. If you need something, just send out a call.”

With that, he throws a wave over one shoulder and goes out the screen door, lifting off gently from the top step of the porch without looking back.

**

Sailing calmly over the city, however, he can’t help but make one more detour.

On the wrought iron balcony of the nice hotel on Bourbon Street, a pretty lady is sipping dark coffee and daintily eating a scone while the mid-afternoon bustle and music swell under her feet.

She’s just as beautiful as ever.

Conner sets his box on the lip of the roof and slowly sinks down, a small smile already on his face, one that’s wholly for _her_.

And he catches it before she can turn her face, let her hair cover her profile—she smiles too, already knows he’s _there_.

“Hi Pretty Lady,” he rumbles affectionately as he lands right in the seat across from her.

Cass’s smile gets wider, her eyes scrunched slightly (and he knows she only does it when she’s _content_ with things, as close to _happy_ as she can get), and the fondness is still there.

Brief, powerful, beautiful had been their time together—a meeting of similar souls that found comfort in one another’s presence. Conner could talk for hours and she would listen to ever word, give him her full attention automatically, make sure he knew how _important_ he was. In return, he could give her the silence she needed, hold on to her gently, rub a palm in circles over her back until her body unlocked and she could _breathe_ again. They didn’t make demands of one another, didn’t need to hide their weaknesses in obvious strengths (like some _speedsters_ had a knack for doing) to deflect away, to _hide_.

He and Cass could just _be_.

“Conner,” her soft voice still purrs, still sends shivers down his spine. “Okay?”

He nods a little, still smiling, trying to remember the last time they’d met to catch up. “Yeah, it’s better now. I mean, I like it here so far. Everyone made a good call.”

“Good. Deserve good things.”

He leans an elbow on the delicate looking little table, eyes bright, “back atcha, babe. How’s Hong Kong? Heard it got rough there for a while. Black Bat trying to take down a major section of the Triad.”

And when she smiles that sharp little moue, he laughs, losing some of the tension from the scene at the farmhouse. “Well, I’m glad you had fun taking apart bad guys.”

“Always do.” And with a comfortable move, she slides her fingers against his palm, “but, needed here.”

He hums a little, absently rubbing a thumb on the back of her hand. “Aw, you came to check up on us, didn’t you?”

“Maybe,” and there’s that smile again.

“Tim,” he guesses shrewdly, “you came back for Tim.”

One finger of her free hand taps her nose, and he laughs a little, “good. I hope you talked some sense into him.”

“Direction,” she counters gently, “not going _to_ , but going _away_. Wrong direction. Now, maybe better.”

He gets it, squeezes her hand in thanks, “Please tell me you at least convinced him to put armor back in his suit.”

She tilts her head, and arches a brow. “Not my job, _your_ job. Make him take better care of mind… _and_ body.”

Conner’s face goes immediately pink, “hey. Bart and I—”

She just hums, her smile turning sly. “Good for him, the two of you.”

“We…we _were_ , for the old Tim, but Grayson broke his fucking _heart_ , Cass. I don’t know how long it’s going to take for him to be even remotely okay again.” And Conner has to look away from the _Bat_ suddenly in her eyes, an assessing expression, calculating the weight of his words and everything behind it. Well, family of _detectives_ , that is.

But in her own way, Cass has a talent for her occasional bits of wisdom, but more so telling people what they _need_ to hear versus what they _want_.

“Was very okay…with you two.” She bats her eyes at him, laughing softly right in his face because _busted_. Of _course_ those feelings were still there, of _course_ she knew he and Bart would be after Tim like idiots because he was _theirs first_ and there would always, _always_ be room—

“You suck,” he finally goes with, propping his chin on his hand.

“Effective,” she corrects and he laughs again.

Eventually, Cass gives him the other scone and shares her coffee, listening to the details of the last few months she’d been deep undercover in the Hong Kong underworld.

And it’s close to dark before he finally lifts off her balcony, making sure to wrap her up in tight hug before he picked up his box and headed for ( _home_ ) HQ.

**

The sight when he gets back is better than he really could have hoped for.

The box from Smallville gets dropped out of the way and he joins the rest of the team at the island where the smell of something home cooked wafts from the center, and it’s sweats and t-shirt time for everyone. BB is telling a story, all waving hands and full body dives while Rave secretly smiles and gingerly dabs ointment on Tim’s raw knuckles while he eats with the one she’s already treated. Cassie has her bunny slippers on the low rung of her stool, laughing at the usual antics and wrestling with Bart over the last dumpling.

He gets a round of welcome when he takes the empty seat and starts accepting sides to fill his plate, and everyone gives a status on how far along they are to start building their own dynamic as a new team.

“HQ is 68% operational,” Tim fills in, waving a hand over his shoulder.  “We need at least 85% to run all necessary security protocols and be running enough to realistically take on more than the run-of-the-mill bad guys.”

And just like in his old Perch, the hologram screens pop up in the center of the island, turning just slightly. The schematics of the building are outlined in accomplished and _naw, not there yet_.

Bart however, is the one to push the envelope just _enough_ not to get him in too much trouble (usually…okay _mostly_ ), “mmhm, ‘we,’ huh, Tim?”

And yes, _Tim_ , that eyebrow is for _you_.

Their former leader slurps his noodles and finally glances at everyone assembled in this achingly familiar way. He clears his throat just enough, “I understand… there might be a position open for a team vigilante. Totally forgot a copy of my resume on the printer at home though, so sad about it.”

And no, Conner doesn’t snort Zesti out of his nose, _but it’s a close thing_.

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Cassie just smirks back (and probably a little smug too because, well, _gotcha_ Tim), “I mean, you come with some pretty impressive references.”

“Actually, I think I really do want to read that,” Bart shrugs, “I mean a vigilante’s _resume_. Like, _Job Skills: kicking ass_. _Hobbies: kicking ass_. _Special awards: various molars and bone fragments_.”

“ _Dude!_ Stop reading my stuff, seriously. How did you even _know_?”

More food is consumed, more banter thrown across the counter, and the ease of a good night with good friends slows time. Cleaning up is familiar, moving around one another as Conner and Bart put leftovers in little Rubbermaid containers, BB washes and Tim dries, Raven wipes up the counters, and Cassie makes popcorn for the inevitable movie night.

Tomorrow and the following days—well, that will time for the team to _move_. Tonight is to celebrate coming _home_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because we need the group coming together, yeah?


	6. Part XI and XII (What's in a Name)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been up on Tumblr for a minute >.< Sorry. Shout-out to Arkaedia and @poison-basil for helping. Seriously. The struggle was REAL. I don’t want to kill the surprise, but @yangmallow was the one that gave me the last name ;)

# No Home for Dead Birds XI

It wasn’t long after he moved to the ‘Haven. So many people around him were dying, his father already gone, and B figured out there was no  _Uncle_  to keep him out of CPS (and those little tips  _helped_ , thanks Bruce). It was before the adoption, before he felt like he could  _breathe_  again without his chest caving in.

It was just after Cass left for Hong Kong, and he was running free in Blüdhaven, not giving much of a shit if he kept moving to the next ass hat or not. Kon and Bart were in a constant state of  _pissed off_  with him because he wouldn’t just  _stop_ and mourn, wouldn’t let them be good boyfriends, wouldn’t let them comfort him.

(At the time, he didn’t understand  _why_  it mattered so much to them, why they couldn’t let him fight out his pain like he’d always had to  _do._ )

Dick…showed up at the terrible flophouse he was in, amazing him because after losing  _everything_ , Dick was the last person Tim expected to see anywhere  _near_ the ‘Haven. But, when his “big brother” refused to take  _get the fuck out_  for an answer, he hadn’t had the energy really to fight anymore.

(He’s been fighting for so  _long,_ hasn’t he?)

Instead, he got trapped in the whirlwind of activity that  _is_  Dick Grayson.

( _It’s not the first time he’s saved me_ )

And Dick had gone the good brother things; he had tried  _so hard_  to get Tim out of the funk, to make sure he wasn’t going to shove the .45 in his mouth and blow his fucking head off or something.

( _What a wasted effort_ )

A night of tolerating Dick’s presence, his light and witty banter, of being the Cindy to his Marsha, and something in his broken chest caved way.

He couldn’t have  _known_  at the time how stupid he was for kissing his long-standing crush in the first place. A year later and he would  _def_  find out.

**

Because at almost twenty, he’s fucking  _done_  with everything except the group of loveable  _assholes_  shuffling along around him, keeping him moving with their sheer momentum. He follows Cassie’s excitedly bouncing ass and slowly drifts to the side, just enough to slide a finger into the side pocket of Bart’s jeans while they walk through the brightly lit aisle of IKEA.

It feels stupid to do something like that, but really, the speedster is too busy talking and looking around to notice anyway. (His other best friend, however, isn’t, and does notice, a corner of his mouth quirking up.)

Gar’s shirt stretches tight over his shoulders when he points out the Dyfjord over the Hemnes since Rachel is still on board with the Tyssedal.  Really, as long as it does things like  _hold stuff in drawers_ , he’s good either way (because things that will eventually hold dangerous vigilante weaponry? Those things he makes himself, so just raw materials. Seriously, he needs something that can withstand a small explosion and most of the stuff here? Would stand a chance in hell). But this gives him time to idly work on his phone, playing with the code for the first training loop while holding on to Bart’s pocket with the other. His body operates on auto-pilot as he’s balls deep in the numbers and commands, making vague noises at towel racks. As he’s been informed, he has to put all the shit together himself anyway, so he’s about to drop the Koppang and end all the mayhem.

There,  _mindblown_.

Well, after this next span of code (because  _some_ people need special guns with the right tracking capabilities to make it, you know, a challenge. Speed and such).

He’s riding on over twelve hours of sleep before this little team-building exercise (and nice try. He knows  _exactly_  why they’re doing this, not just because  _Oh, since you have exercised sensible decision-making, we will reward you with shopping_. Yup, sure.) But…playing along is so,  _so_  much  _good times_  that it makes him the right kind of nostalgic. Not something painful, something to  _choke on_ , but something lighter, something building all over again in those steps of affection and a mutual love for beating the ever-loving  _shit_  out of bad guys.

And it was… _different_ , finding himself immersed with his old team to do movie night in celebration of his agreement to stay and rejoin them under new management (you know,  _their own_ ). And yes, he was stupidly touched they went out on a limb and picked up the new Star Wars because, well, he’s the ultimate nerd of the group and probably always will be.

( _Some people remember the little things._ )

Still, much heckling and throwing popcorn at the screen is absolutely  _rote_.

Falling asleep was definitely not his intention and should have been damn near  _impossible_  considering his sleep pattern has only become more sporadic, short and sweet bursts, in the time he’s been out on his own vigilanting it  _up_.

The fact Conner was able to lift him without waking him, that his painfully sensitive instincts didn’t immediately alert him, kick his system into  _fight_  mode was far too telling for his peace of mind. It’s something at the very bottom of his priority list, something he can’t  _think_  about (because  _now_  is not the time for any of it, any of the should-have, would-haves, to feel like utter  _shit_  about how  _wrong_ he did them, how they should have just turned their fucking  _backs_  on him—just like  _Dick_ — because he made a fucking  _choice_ —the wrong one as it turns out) since there’s a whole lot of ‘shit we still need to do before we’re ready to break criminal heads.’

So he’s totally  _not_  thinking about the span of footage he caught from the new and improved communal floor proving that  _yes_  his system works and is crystal-fucking-clear because he  _saw_  the smirk on Rave’s face, he saw Gar snickering at him, he saw Cassie gently touch his hair, he saw Bart lay a throw over him with absurd gentleness just before Conner eased arms under him and lifted.

He shouldn’t have been shocked to wake up in the room Cassie showed him on day one ( _it was his from the get-go, wasn’t it?_ ). The room for the guy they wanted as their strategist, their intel source. The two rooms are at the top of the new HQ, the secondary one prepped with a boss system (that is oddly similar to the one he built from the ground up in his Perch at the old Titan’s Tower. Hm. Coincidence, right?), work station, compact lab for analysis, and a meeting room with conference table.

All the nice things.

When he blinks owlishly around the separate bedroom, it takes too long for his brain to get with the ‘ _holy shit this is comfortable_ ’ groove. It’s the first real bed he’s slept in since his last night in the Manor, not a cot, a couch, a seat, or the floor, it’s soft and perfect, molding around his body, more comfortable than he can remember being in a while. It’s enough that he really doesn’t  _want_  to get up. Is pretty good sinking back down for a few more…

When he finally manages to get somewhat conscious and use the impressive shower, he digs in the stacks of boxes in the walk-in closet, looking from something he can throw on—

And pulls out his last pre-everyone-dying Robin suit with green sleeves on the tunic and those reinforced green tights ( _before Conner and Bart died, before his ident was compromised, before Dad was murdered, before Bruce died, before Dick betrayed him_ ). The sight leaves him weak-kneed, choking, trying very hard  _not_  to throw up because that shit was seriously a little  _out_  of left field.

(And if he sat in that closet for twenty minutes while his eyes got  _hot_  and full, holding that piece of his  _life_  while thinking about how Dick’s hands pulled  _this very tunic_  off him the last time before it ended up in a  _box_ , then no one would be the wiser because after he was done, he pulled his shit together, stood the  _fuck up_ , and closed that suit back up in the box to gather dust again when he should really send it straight to Dick with a huge  _fuck you_  sign attached. But  _nope_ , it’s his last vestige of the life he used to love, so until he could even  _take it_ , the damn thing would stay.)

The unlabeled boxes are full of his old things, things he’d apparently left in in the Tower before the last  _good-bye_  from the Justice League. Which is another thing he is  _not_  going to think about, but shoves those moments, out of his sight, and digs in another to pull out a pair of slightly too-small sweats and a nerd t-shirt that smell like Kevlar and spice, one that hangs off him because taller yes, but lacking some pounds apparently.

And yes, he realizes the bathroom is stocked with his brand of shampoo and body wash (and  _fuck_ , there’s even a can of that shitty hair gel—no more of  _that_ fuck-you-very-much). Yes, he realizes the sheets are blue instead of red (but not  _that_  blue, Nightwing blue, thank God). Yes, he realizes the yoga mat under the bed is worn and  _have-I-seen-that-before?_  Yes, he realizes the medicine cabinet has his favored brand of tape to wrap his hands so the  _owfuck_  isn’t so painful after a night cracking heads together.

 _(There’s antibiotics there—someone found out about the spleen thing, right?_ )

Really, he doesn’t need any more evidence—they planned on adding him to the roster, made a place for him, made sure his stuff wasn’t just tossed out in a dumpster when the new team started moving in.

( _He wouldn’t have even blamed them for it, really._ )

It’s a tough enough realization to make him facepalm for several long moments because  _these guys_.

Seriously.

Coming downstairs to the team gathered for lunch, a plate set out for him, and excited chatter while a  _po’ boy_  is absently set in front of him along with a grape fucking  _Zesti_  (grape is always the best).  All the plans they already have mapped-out, their contingencies and safe houses, their contacts and info sources, layers the conversation around him while he scarfs his food down, moving in time with everyone else chewing rather than really eating. Instead, he listens to how they’ve started gathering their own network of crime fighting and superheroing.

Within the fire few bites, he was done for.

The bus tickets out of New Orleans he’s had carefully stowed away were thrown in the trash an hour or so later before he started down to look at the training room on the lower level Gar had half-rigged up, a mess of wiring still needed to be run, lights needed to be connected, the AI that had been adapted from an old team project needed to be installed, and just the vents, man. How could you forget to booby trap  _the vents_?

( _Okay, so they need him for shit like this_ )

But it’s odd and comforting to have the them pause, gazes swinging to him to when he starts talking, laying out the power grid and system configurations, when they take his opinions as  _that’ll work, how long until we can get started?_

As much as he’s freaked out by the attention after being his own team, it eases the raw and jagged edges he refused to focus on, to give  _power_  to anymore.

 _(It’s time to start moving again, asshole,_ in Robin’s old voice in the back of his head, the voice of variable  _reason_. Except in matters of Dick Grayson apparently.)

But it’s fine because it’s not like he didn’t expect  _more_  of these little things to look forward to. You know, the whole team  _bonding_  thing. He gets it, he really does because most of it is them trying to figure him out all over again, sizing him up. The last few months of playing the game, being the nameless, travelling vigilante, had taken its toll. He  _knows_  he’s different, he knows he’s not the same Robin, not even Red, not even  _Tim_  in too many respects. When they get done with this little  _outing_ , he has every intention of sitting them down and laying the plan right out.

(And  _fuck_ , he has a plan again—he has  _plans._ )

For now, he’s just raises a brow at Conner and nods his head to the Koppang. The super winks behind his fake, dark-rimmed glasses and subtly veers off from the group. He’s the smart one, not getting in on  _this_  little argument.

The group shuffles, pulls him along with the forward momentum. He’s already decided how he’s going to lay out their systems once the immediate needs are identified, then get scans up and running, get their basics ready to fill in the gaps between the other superhero groups. A database of their baddies, strengths and weaknesses, bolt holes and last-knowns. He needs algorithms to track credible sources for any kind of intel they might need to keep  _track_.

He starts when Conner lays a hand on his shoulder, the conversation running around him lost in the multiple contingencies he’s got running in his primary processes as warm-up.

“Tim? Food after this, dude, since you’re driving the truck. Gar’s license is expired and I don’t trust Bart behind the wheel of anything that goes over ten miles an hour.”

He immediately bites down on his lip before Bart even does the speedster double-take with an offended squawk, “wh-wh-what?! I am totally trustworthy driving—“

“—off a cliff,” Cassie fills in, humming to herself while pushing the flat cart with the boxes all loaded.

“—into a wall,” Gar seconds with a wink.

Rave just pats Bart’s shoulder but doesn’t even  _try_.

“All of you suck,” Bart bickers back, “that one time was totally not my fault, dammit—“

And it’s just so  _crazy_  that he’s laughing under the cover of one hand while looking obediently at the bathroom towels Cassie is asking about while she shakes her head in mirth at all the  _antics_  or stands in front of the full-length mirror Raven suggests he could use.

“Okay, so next we need—”

“Wall cabinets.”

Gar, Raven, Cassie, and Bart pause in  _the mission_ , turn to blink at him because he’s been pretty quiet since coming down to breakfast after pulling a Rip Van Winkle.

“I need some wall cabinets,” he specifies with a half-shrug.

“Righteous.” Gar grins wide, the projectors taking away the slightly longer canines along with the whole  _green_  thing. He seriously looks like a surfer from Cali, and that? Is completely believable. “They have, like, the mirrored ones, dude. I totally had to have a set.”

“I already know my ass looks fantastic in tights, man. We can go practical on this one,” he deadpans back, moving to lead the way without taking his finger from Bart’s pocket.

It’s telling when Rave is the one that laughs out loud, but, well, he gets the mirrored ones any  _damn_ way.

**

A few days later, he takes a tour of a nice place in Faubourg Ste. Marie on Marseille Street for his daytime pseud (and…he’s really going to be Tim Drake again, like, being back in the  _real_  world, isn’t he?) to do  _crazy_  things— like start establishing  _residency_.

It’s been awhile since he’s been  _that guy_ , but still, the knowledge never really left his brain pan. The suit is cut perfectly (reminding him of another  _life_ ), and he falls back into the old space, charming the realtor with stories of Gotham City (the most crime-ridden in America. “Oh my! The things you must have seen.”  _You really have no idea_ ), and bringing another industry to the booming town.

He doesn’t take the first place, but circles four more he wants to look at in her handbook, smiles when he hands it back, and she’s slightly breathless when she guarantees she’ll have the keys for them tomorrow morning.

He also mentions being in the market for office space—something large to house a substantial crew for the newest main office of Drake Industries.

HQ is closer to 60% up and running (because at least  _someone_  can get everyone moving when things like wiring and panelling needs to be done—some of you can fly, do this thing) when Miles Kelsey comes down from Gotham with the official paperwork. It’s three small letters that have already been attached to his name under the Wayne Enterprise heading (just a formality to keep Bruce’s legacy out of the hands of Hush and Ra’s). But it mean  _more_  now. Not a deflection, not a ploy, not because of  _do or else_. It’s his choice this time since, well, the reason for those hint drops in his voicemail? He’s going to turn twenty-one in a few months, and the whole shebang is going to be offered up, get a Drake back in control of the company. Miles is the one that wanted him to know in advance, maybe start early, get a  _jump_  on everything, and figure out if this is what he wants.

Thanks for looking out, man. Let’s see what we’ve got to  _work with_.

Miles hasn’t changed at all since he last visited the offices in Gotham. The guy is and always was a powerhouse, one of the reasons he’s been on the Board of Directors for so long.

In addition to being one of his dad’s good friends, Miles has always been a voice for the interest of the people (at times, over the business model), and it’s bittersweet seeing the older man again when they meet at a cafe in the Business District to go over the details.

Tim has a smart three-piece suit on that made Cassie whistle appreciatively while the others give him the equivalent of cat calls when he gets back—you know, because they’re assholes.

He’s giving them the half-smirk that is desperately familiar and heats up his coffee from this morning (previous night  _whatever really_ ).

The convo he walks in on is at—

“It would be  _such_  a bitchin’ reality show,” Gar grins, sharp and wide from his spot on the island. The littering of wiring, motherboards, random drives, parts and pieces laid out in front of him like a variable buffet of tech. There’s a bin on the floor by his stool with completed comm units ready for use. He’s got about seventy-some so far because,  _well dude, we go through so many of these, you don’t even know_.

“No way,” Conner argues while he presses down the panini maker gingerly (the last one was not as reinforced—the parts are in the trash by his hip), “there’s no island or anything.”

“I’m thinking more  _Real World_  versus  _Survivor_ , dude.”

“With the way our lives go,  _Survivor_  would probably be more fitting.”

And yes, that’s him, hiding his grin with his mug, and shaking his head at the antics of crazy superheroes.

Cassie is still out doing research on the local universities, thinking about History and Anthropology. Raven is taking the nice background docs he “made” to establish her a  _real_  ident to the DMV so she can have a picture ID all her own (she’s been using the Rachel Roth pseud for, well,  _forever_ , but he totally gets the whole let’s make it  _legal_  kind of feel.) Bart left to go for an interview for ( _wait for it_ ), a bike courier position.

(He totally didn’t facepalm. Promise.)

When he’s putting his mug in the sink, buttoning his coat regardless of  _the heat_ , Conner (now Conner Kesel, thanks to a little bit of  _magic_ , or well, shameless hacking) leans in bump their shoulders together in such a  _familiar_ move. Those blue eyes are crinkled down at him, wide and bright and—

 _Fuck_.

“Hey Mr. CEO. This,” and there’s a finger wiggle at the suit, “not bad.”

He smirks because, well, it’s all sinking into his  _bones_  at this point. The new digs, the company, the team ( _his_  team), and things are coming together in a way he hadn’t expected it to ever again. The worst part is the slow warm coiling in low in his belly when Conner or Bart smile at him again.

_Double fuck_

“It’s supposed to be a  _cover_  story.”

Conner just raises a brow at him and hums.

It makes the point.

His sigh is ignored for the smoke screen it is really is, “okay, so it’s a  _good_  cover story. Establishing a believable pseud is a good rule of thumb. Cassie is going to college, Bart is working, Gar is being the lazy, rich degenerate—” earning him a “hey! Well, yeah, so true,” from said degenerate before he goes back to the comms— “Rave might start a business once she had a real ident, and…”

He waves a hand absently, “someone has to pay for it all. Why not be me?”

And Con does  _that thing_. Crosses his arms over his chest and gives him the  _stare down_ , totally seeing the utter  _bullshit_  without fail. The question of who would fund them has never been an issue; all of them have moved and maintained a financial cushion  _long_  before they broke it off as Titans.

Tim is trying to carve out a place for himself, something that can’t be taken  _away_ , a new ident, a new set of rules and  _how to live’s_ , and the meta-human can recognize it before Tim  _himself_  really can.

It’s one of those crazy moment where, if they were  _still_  that Superboy and that Robin, he would cuff the vigilante on the shoulder and tell him not to be a dumb ass (or when they were  _that_  Kon, Tim, and Bart, he would grip those hips and talk his ex-boyfriend out of his own headspace of insecurities). Instead, he lifts a hand to the back of the CEO’s neck, squeezing gently and turning Tim to look him in the eye.

“Don’t think you have to do it for any  _other_  reason than you want to.” Conner admonishes, “we’ve got plenty of resources, and you know it. People are grateful when you save them and the donations have always been put aside. If there’s one thing we  _don’t_  need, it’s money, Tim.”

And Conner watches those eyes blink quickly in surprise, the head tilt just  _slightly_  when the guy with the plan is faced with a fact he hadn’t considered.

Conner just leans down a little, raising a brow, “there’s nothing  _wrong_  with making your mark outside the mask. You want to be the Drake running your Dad’s company, then have at it. No one is going to judge you for it.”

“Conner…”

The expression on Tim’s face is so utterly  _painful_  in that moment, like his best friend is  _expecting_  some kind of admonishment, some kind of humiliation,  _something_ , that Conner just can’t  _stand there_ waiting on the outside anymore. He’s been treating Tim from some imagined distance for too long as it is.

And slowly, easily, without disturbing the two, Gar Logan slips easily out of his seat in front of the still-playing flat screen and strafes down the hall until he’s far enough away to hit the staircase (sure, Con had super hearing, but something tells him Blue might be a little  _busy_  at the moment).

He doesn’t see the super shake his head in old exasperation and pull this  _dumb ass_  in by the back of his neck, letting Tim rest his forehead right on the curve of Conner’s collarbone.

Hands are hesitant, light, high on his hips in such a familiar way that the super grins to himself because  _dammit Tim_.

“It’s…fucking  _stupid_  isn’t it?” The vigilante asks quietly, keeping his head bowed.

“To want something to hold on to? I don’t think that’s stupid.”

The laugh is not one of those  _ha-ha_  funny ones, it’s something a little more bitter, “everyone gave their  _idents_  up, dude. What the  _fuck_  am I  _doing_?”

“Making it your choice this time,” Conner replies easily, knowledgeably.

And for the fucking  _life_  of him, he can’t even get in a breath.

 

 

# What’s in a Name

 

_**Rachel**_

She very easily puts the mug down and lifts a hand to the back of Tim’s neck, her skin cool and smooth, her smile the ghost of  _fond_.

“Muninn?” He asks, muffled where his head is buried on his arms because  _damn_  the island is just the perfect height for him to plop down on a stool and maybe take a nap. But, he wants the answer. He wants the answer from them all.

Why  _that_  name?

( _Maybe so he can finally pick another?_ )

And turns his head enough for a fresh breath of air and to sleepily regard her as she slides on the stool next to him with her own caffeine and the smallest of smiles he can’t remember ever seeing on her face before.

“Because I am accustomed to being Raven,” she sighs a little sadly without losing that smile, and Tim makes a mental note to do some digging, find out where she was during his time out. “And Odin kept ravens Huguinn and Muninn as his Memory. I like this idea perhaps. To be the keeper of memory.”

She sips at her tea, watching him with calm, cool, and collected.

“I like it for you,” he leans up enough to grip the mug in front of him with both hands. “I like the  _idea_ , so we’re def going to go with it.”

She hums a little, “I am glad. This... _choice_  is freeing in a way, Tim. More so than I anticipated when he informed the Justice League of our parting.”

She has his full attention and uses it strategically, “it had been coming for some time, I think. Everyone, all of us, had been growing out of  _their_  control for quite some time. Gar and I, well, we have been operating on our own outside the team for years. You are aware of this.”

He nods gently back at her, one foot idly swinging off the rung of the stool, and  _yes_ , he knew. All of them had their own baddies, their own pet projects, their own ghosts and demons.

Just like  _him_.

What kept them together? They all knew when it was time to come  _back_.

(And that’s what he’s doing now, isn’t he?)

Raven… _Muninn_  gives him a sharper edge to that smile like she knows exactly what he’s thinking— and couldn’t agree  _more_.

“It’s good,” she sips at her mug, eyes soft while he’s still bleary and unfocused, “that you have decided to join back with us.”

With a yawn, he scrubs the grit out of his eyes, “I know...I wasn’t okay for a while, but I was still  _moving_ , you know? I was getting to the part where it was all fine.”

She hums lightly, reading into his bullshit without a hitch, “like all Robins, Tim, you could have continued alone. However,  _unlike_  the others, I believe you have a potential for  _more_ ,” and her graceful hand gestures around the comfortable commons room, her dark gaze coming back to rest on him pointedly.

And if he laughs a little at her blatant  _humanity_  showing through, shoving a hand through his hair with eyes only slightly wet, well, that’s just going to be a little secret between them.

_**Conner**_

“Belenus?”

The clone smiles at him, hands dangling between the knees of his torn jeans. It’s just  _them_  in this new reality, and those blue, blue eyes have picked up a new  _trick_ , trying to look past the surface to find something…

_(The truth)_

Once upon a time, his bullshit tech could throw the clone off when needed. Anymore, it doesn’t look like that’s going to be the case.

At the top of their HQ, Conner isn’t floating above the lip of the roof, stays firmly rooted beside Tim, so close their thighs could almost be touching.

“It’s—”

“Yeah. Sun God reference, but—” he shrugs, but the leftovers still Superboy are there in the tightness of his forearms (“Robin, why does Superman seem to... _hate_  me? Have I done something against regulations?” “That’s...that’s not it, Superboy, really.” But at the  _time_ , he’d already seen how disappointing and degrading it was to the clone, to know he wasn’t  _wanted_  by his biological donor. Some things? He  _gets_.)

“You know Clark is an asshole, Con. Don’t feel like you need to do  _anything_.” Like give Superman the fucking  _satisfaction_.

“When we left the Tower for good, after we found out with the Justice League did, what they’ve been doing for a  _while_ , I spent some time out in the world, like I never have before. I…” and Conner sighs, his expression changes, smooths out like the days when he’d first come  _alive_. The blank, expressionless face was a default when he didn't’ understand something or when he felt he needed to  _hide_.

And before his best friend says a  _word_ , tries to spit out some acceptable explanation he might have already crafted for the rest of the team rather than the  _truth_ , Tim’s hand on his wrist stops it.

(Because he’s known Conner from Day 1, and there’s no need for him to get defensive about his choice. There’s no  _need_  for him to explain one of the turning points in his  _life_  was the time he’d been badly injured and Superman had snagged his clone up in the blink of an eye and flown them both directly to the sun in hopes it would have the same healing effect. It was the first time Clark showed  _concern_  and care, it was the first time Conner had felt like he wasn’t just some  _abomination_. The name Kon-El, the addition in the Book of the House of El came not long after it, but  _still_. By the time they’d met him in Ma’s house on his way  _out_ , it was so far too little, too late that all he could do was  _this_ , this  _name_.)

And Tim  _gets it_. Really, he  _does_. The second Bruce handed him the tunic with the R, it was the same intense rush. The first time Batman called him  _Robin_. “Believe it or not, I  _understand_ , man. I’m completely on board. Belenus it is.”

And those eyes come back to him, absolutely familiar in every way that he has to consciously catch himself from putting a hand to the back of Con’s neck to give a familiar squeeze, from a familiar pull for the clone to let himself list into Tim’s body..

“Heh. Thanks, T. You don’t know how much that means.”

And well, considering Con is holding on to the flash drive with all the files on Project 13 from CADMUS, of which he brought out after Clark snubbed him time and time again, thumb rubbing across the thing like a security blanket, Tim can absolutely  _guess_.

He doesn’t put that hand on the back of Conner’s neck, but he  _does_  grip the wrist  _tighter_  to just hold on.

** _Garfield**_

Usually it’s him hanging upside down playing electrician. Nice to see Gar pulling it out like a  _boss_.

“Saturn?”

“Titan of  _time_ , man,” the older superhero replies from half-inside the ceiling tiles. “Do you even  _know_  how long I’ve been at this game, T?”

He laughs a little and goes back to the motherboard in his lap, getting it ready for Gar to install. “I might have  _heard_  once or twice." He doesn’t need to say the only other of them in the game since he was eight was... ( _Dick_ )  _that_  guy; both of them are already  _aware_  of the metaphorical elephant in the room. Still, Tim appreciates the consideration since, well, Gar used to worship the ground Dick walked on. It’s nice to know the shape-shifter still welcomed him back  _regardless_.

"Rach told me it was, um,  _you_  that lead the charge against the Justice League.”

There’s a shift, a random surge of energy, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end (because, you know,  _meta powers_ ), and the low  _pop_  is just a random chimpanzee hanging upside down from the ceiling tiles by the tail. He grins because seeing a monkey smirk is never  _not_  going to be entertaining.

But Gar can work better and have this little  _convo_ , Timbo, because, man, why not just  _talk about it_.

“So,  _look_ , T,” and Gar’s deeper baritone coming out of the monkey gets his attention, “I’m in my  _late_  twenties no matter how bangin’ I look. Rach is in her, I don’t know,  _hundreds_  or something, Cassie is nineteen, Bart is  _who knows how old_ , and Con is like six or something.  _Anyway_ , the point  _is_ — we don’t need someone to  _task_ us. Especially with whatevs is their  _deal_. B-man’s little  _assignments_? The League’s second-hitters? Nah, thanks for  _not_  lookin’ out. Then, for the JL to tell us who we can fight with? Who we can trust? The days when they could  _do that_  are  _long over_. I was pretty sure we had that  _understanding_  when Dick had to lay it out that we?” the monkey pauses to wave his hands in emphasis, “are autonomous. Sure, we wanna take on  _that_  fight, why not? But that was supposed to be  _our call_ , dude.  _We_  got to make the team decisions, so the crap they pulled with you? Nah, bro, not happening anymore.”

Tim goes back to the motherboard in his hands, staring down at it, taking in the justifications.

“But the fact they did it to  _you_?” Gar goes on with a sneer as he splices two wires together, using his feet to tape and hands to connect, “that’s total  _bullshit_. Like, straw that broke the camel’s back, ‘kay?”

Tim blinks at the monkey owlishly because, well, he really didn’t think  _he_  was Gar’s fave Robin.

“Okay,” he replies softly, looking up at the green-eyed monkey.

“Don’t get it twisted, dude. All the mentors screw up. Ollie and Roy, Clark and Con, Diana and Donna, hell, Bats and Dick. We’re  _human_ ,” and Gar wags a brow as his hairy arms give a helpless motion, “or  _some_  form of it. People fuck up. But ousting you without even  _talking_  to us first? Just letting us think it was  _your call_  all along?  _Nope_ , not schway. Not schway  _At. All._ ”

With his throat oddly clogged, he zaps the motherboard one last time with his own brand of tech  _magic_  and stands to hand it up.

“I...I could understand why Dick wanted Dami to step up with the Titans,” and even  _saying_  that makes his chest go cold. “Robin has always had a place on the team. I mean...it fucking  _sucked_ , but I still  _got it_ , Gar. The way of things, you know? Robin is part of the team.”

A green brow arches, “ _oh?_  You mean all those years of  _Discowing_  leading the call was any different than  _you_  as Red Robin?”

And that moment in front of the Justice League when he’d made  _the same damn argument_  passes by, making him avert his gaze as the monkey slides the motherboard home. The connects are super  _easy_ , man. Not even any trouble.

In a swift, smooth move, the monkey jumps and twists, turning into the human as he  _lands it_ , and faces the former Robin with brows drawn and a frown marring his features.

“T-man.  _Dude_. You  _know_  how close I am with Dick. None of that is a newsflash. He’s  _always_  going to be one of my  _closest_  bros. Years of being on a team and just being in this  _life_  together takes bonding to a whole new level.  _But,_  I’m not blind to the fact the guy can be super impulsive  _and_  seriously dramatic. All you Bats are, inherit it from the Big Guy,” Gar makes both pointer fingers cowl ears behind his head in reference. “But  _that time?_  He was  _wrong_ , Tim. I don’t know the down an’ dirty, and you don’t need to lay it out for me, but I know he seriously messed up with you all the way around.”

But it hits Tim in a belated wave, makes him stare at Gar and blink. Of all the people he thought would side with Dick (because  _he_  was strong enough to win the cowl, so  _of course_  it was  _his_ opinion on who should wear the tunic that really fucking  _mattered_ , right? Not the goddamned kid that was already  _in it_ ), he was sure Gar would be right on that side of the equation.

(And he is very,  _very_  carefully not going to think about the straight-out  _end_  of their relationship—no word and no warning. Because that? Had no place in the here and now.)

The shape shifter is easy when he wraps an arm around Tim’s shoulders, subtly steering them to the main doors. He ignored the furious wiping of the face and only vaguely acknowledges the husky, watery, “thanks, man. Seriously,” without being offended.

Instead, Gar just gives a little, “de nada. We’re going to do what we do  _best_ , and that, my friend, is kick ass and take names.”

“Yeah,” Tim agrees with a small grin, “we do have a knack for kicking ass, right?”

“Totes,” and Gar leads him back to the Communal Floor where at least  _someone_ would be lounging around after a rigorous morning testing the lower floors. Something tells Gar a board game night will most  _def_  be on the roster.

**Cassie**

She’s cozied up in the window seat, watching the rain. The sweatshirt is an old one of Con's, big enough that her hands barely peep through the end of the sleeves, but the healing scabs on her bruised and battered knuckles make him duck his head with a smile. It's an easy thing to put the kettle on by muscle memory and hunt around in cabinets until he finds the right one.

(It's a simple, fat glass jar she'd found in one of the markets in the French Quarter. Terribly perfect for the purpose.)

It smells like spices when he opens it, the teas all neatly arranged.

The jasmine is light at it steeps, and for  _once_  he foregoes coffee to have a mug himself.

He's still in the new CEO skin, and the proposal today went far better than he could have  _imagined._ His new line of products were going to start in R&D, then out for testing. The possibilities of growth in the next five years alone could put them higher in the Fortune 500 ratings.

Too bad for Bruce. He might have made a half-way decent CEO for Wayne Enterprises.

Crazy thing that.

But Cassie starts gently from her thoughts when he holds the mug down and fits himself across from her in the window seat, room for them both to look out at the rain and the throngs of people dancing in it.

" _Ceres_. I like it."

The comment is mild and unassuming, but she lays her forehead against the glass and rolls her eyes at what's becoming his  _usual_ , careful intrusions. It’s still just so… _strange_ , seeing him like this, so subdued and grown-up from the Robin she knew, from the  _Tim_  she briefly dated when their lives were crumbling under their feet…and there was really nowhere else to go but  _down_.

"I do too," she admits candidly, holding the mug in both palms, "I needed...something  _different_. Wonder Girl was like a noose around my neck sometimes, you know? I'm not like Diana or even Donna."

With a quirk of his mouth, he sips at his own mug because they’ve had this conversation before.  _Third_  Robin. You know, the one  _not_  chosen, so yeah, Cassie, he  _gets it_.

“Their powers were innate things, Tim. A  _part_  of them. When I asked Zeus for his blessing and he gave me these  _abilities_ , I thought I would  _feel_  different, be different, and… I’m not. I can’t keep doing the same thing over and over without thinking about something  _better_. It’s not enough for me to keep fighting the same engineered plots, to put the bad guys in jail, and wake-up to do the same thing over and over and over again. There...there has to be a better way. There has to be something  _more_  than just… _this_.”

He smiles, reaches out and wraps one hand around his dainty ankle, his thumb moving absently over the bone while he listens.

She sighs, staring out into the mid-day, sinking deeper in the seat, “I always thought I’d be Wonder Girl until I needed to take a break from the life. But, I don’t want to  _stop_. There’s so much more to  _do_. Just not…in  _their way_.”

 _Ceres is such a fitting name_ he thinks absently while he sips and rubs.

“You weren’t using all your potential,” he leads gently, laying his head back. “You had to adhere to Amazonian standards. It’s not who you  _are_.”

“Exactly! I mean, I was wearing the uniform for long enough, Tim. I’d taken my ass-chewings, fought the good fight, I put in my  _time_ , and where did it get me?  _No where_. And you’re right. I’m not Amazonian, so they were never really going to trust me anyway.”

His fingers sink into her ankle, grounding her from old regrets.

But Cassie sighs and sips on her tea, “it’s hilarious how we’re all like that a little, isn’t it?”

He hums and uses a thumb to rub into the arch of her foot like how he used to when it was weekends and sometimes other bad guy gatherings, making her sigh when the muscles and tendons are worked out under firm circles.

“I was the Robin that wasn’t chosen,” he starts out slowly, setting his tea aside to work with both hands. “Con was the clone in a family of last survivors of Krypton, Bart is the speedster out of line with the rest of the current Flash family, Rach is literally the only good guy in a family full of bad guys, Gar can’t go anwhere because his meta powers were the result of an accident, and  _you_ ,” he glances up at her, rubbing a tender spot, “are not an Amazon. You don’t want to fight because of  _war_. You want to fight for  _people_.”

She huffs against the window in relief and her other foot wiggles into his lap for similar attention, “that sums it up, I think. But, it’s one of the things that keeps us together.”

“Agreed,” both thumbs work out her instep, strained from a day of wearing heels, “as much as working alone is kind of my  _thing_ at times, even considering current circumstances, I...missed you guys. It’s great to come back in a way.”

Cassie turns from the window finally and a grin slides across her face, lighting up her eyes with mirth. “Ah! Did we finally get you, Mister Detective?”

“I said I was going to stay weeks ago!”

“When you stop planning  _contingencies_ , then I’ll believe that,” and sticks her tongue out at him.

When he laughs back at her, it’s something genuine. “I’m only planning contingencies to get  _the team_  out of the building if it gets compromised, thank-you very much.”

And a few intentional strokes against the bottom of her foot has Cassie howling with laughter and beginning to helplessly flail, but Tim is completely  _unrepentant_. 

“Tim, you  _suck!_ ”

The black eye he’s going to be sporting for the next few days is unequivocally  _worth it_.

** _Bart Allen_ **

“Vakaris. That? Sounds totally bad ass.”

Bart Allen shifts, braces his feet to pull himself out from under the husk of their old Super-Cycle and grin up at the suited CEO with motor oil still on his face.

“God of the Wind, dude. How  _mode_  is that shit?”

And even if it’s strange to be standing here, looking down a little at his former lover and still bestie, the old affections are still  _there_ , right under his skin in the muscles and sinew.

“I’d say you’ve got it about right,” Tim replies, letting his suit jacket fall down his arms. He’s already unbuttoning his cuffs, rolling up his sleeves to take a look at the remains of their old bike. The alien AI long gone, they’re left with the usual human tech to work with.

He takes the side across from B and starts pulling out bolts and burnt-out parts, letting the movement be soothing and automatic, something he doesn’t even really have to think about.

“I know what you want to ask, T,” Bart starts softly from around the bike, “you can. Ask, I mean.”

But the question is if he really  _wants_  those answers.

“You’ve made sure the future is on a better course, what you set out to do when you came here in the beginning,” and the words get husky, Tim clearing his throat so he can be as neutral as possible. “Are you planning to... go back?”

Where he can’t see around the bike, Bart slowly lowers the wrench, braces it on his prosthetic knee. There was so much  _there_ , everything about Max and Jay and Barry and Wally. The twins and the potential  _disaster_  if he  _did_  go back to the future to stay.

(And one day, when he could talk about it without breaking down, without wanting to gnaw himself into pieces. Eventually...he’d give them the  _deets_. All the whys behind his reasons for staying in the past. Not the Flashpoint, but all the fucking  _backlash_  Barry forgot to  _mention_.)

“I’m not going anywhere, dude. Not back to the future anyway. It’s...better if I stay here.”

And, well, it’s  _Tim_. He can venture a guess on the possibilities behind  _that_  statements. Really, meeting their former future selves was an eye-opening experience on what kind of bad shit could go down in the next ten years. Maybe choosing a different path was the only way to divert it, but who really knew how much of that changed? And how much had Bart  _seen_  on his journey back to the past again?

( _Never using a gun again. **Never**_. _)_

“Call me an asshole here, but I’m  _glad_.” Is what comes out of his mouth instead, something stupidly soft in his old  _come here and let me hold you_  kind of way.

The pause across the bike from him, the lack of noise or movement makes his heart beat just a little faster, just a  _hitch_ —

And Bart is leaning around the tire on his hands and knees, coming far enough around to put their faces a foot apart, his eyes are dark amber, warm and inviting.

 _Uh-oh_. (That looks makes him a little breathless, makes his heart skip just  _once_ )

“Ditto, former Boy Wonder,” and for a moment Tim just blinks and stares because if he didn’t know better ( _he does_ ), by the way those eyes flicker down to his mouth, he would think Bart might—

But a slow, knowing grin just slides over the mouth he can’t help but stare at before Bart pulls back slowly and disappears back around the other side.

“Hand me the 3/18th while you’re there.”

“...yeah, here.”

“Ah! Don’t throw it! What’s wrong with you?”

“You have super speed. Are you really telling me you couldn’t have caught that?”

“…you’re an asshole, T.”

“I also answer to  _wise ass,_  in case you were wondering.”

“Filing it away as we speak, Fearless Leader.”

The light-hearted bickering eases down the pressure in his belly from that almost-could-have-been, and Tim gives the status update on the office he’s established in the Business District and temp back office hideout for  _just in case_. Luckily, they’re in a city with enough random bolt holes for safe houses that he’s pretty much got the city and perspective surrounding area mapped out. And if they head up to the Communal Floor later, covered in grease smears and standing  _closer_  while the elevator moves, it’s just another indication how  _close_  to normal things are becoming.

How close to  _ready_  they are to finally  _move_  again.

**

_The Team_

“So this is an all-or-nothing kind of session?”

Tim leans back against the console in their newly completed Control Room, crosses his ankles, and regards his waiting team. “I’m saying it would probably be smart to test the system at seventy percent. Make sure it can take what we dish out.”

Bart perks up because statements like that mean  _playtime_  and everyone usually gets right on board  _that train_. He and Cassie exchange a grin while she cracks her knuckles with  _enthusiasm_.

"I've put it through the standard paces already," and  _nope_ , he can't help the smile cutting across his face, " _but_  a real world battering will help in making adjustments."

Con’s arms are crossed over his chest, blue eyes bright with anticipation, “We’re down. Let’s try to break some stuff.”

“It’s  _sooo_  about time,” Gar fills in with a righteous fist pump.

“Well, why not split into two teams. Belenus and Saturn,” and each perk at the ( _new_ ) names rolling off his tongue like it had been a part of them since the beginning, “team one. Vakaris and Muninn, team two. Ceres plays air support.”

Then he gets a few raised  _eyebrows_ , “join us and it can be three and three,” Con points out.

“I need to monitor the system. Besides, I can see what kind of kick-ass new moves everyone is bringing to the table.”

And it’s a good enough argument because the rest of them can’t find a flaw in his logic. “But,” he placates with a hand in the air, “I’m going out every night this week to patrol the city. All of you get to go so we can do some research on the hidey-holes and bust some criminal heads.”

Bart’s mouth doesn’t drop open, but it’s an almost  _thing_. “You are going to let us  _patrol_  with you?” Because they’d never gotten that from  _Robin_ —any of them. The big fights, the team gatherings, never a step into the realm of the Bat. For Tim, especially; patrolling the streets is his own cathartic need to do the down-and-dirty work (where he’d  _been_  for the last year since the original Batman had come back).

Tim nods, his expression amused, “if we’re serious about doing it... _differently_  this time, then it’s a good idea to get different techniques laid out. You know, like stealth. Not every fight is going to be super-powered bad guys, so sometimes we’re going to need to be on the down-low rather than destroying buildings. Sometimes it’s going to be in places where you can’t expose yourself, and  _nothing_  is going to teach you stealth like staying in the shadows of one of the busiest cities in the US.”

Now Con is wondering if he should go with a mask this time instead of bare face. Just another thing to figure out before their  _night on the town_.

“All the more reason to set the machine to record the session and join us,” Rachel points out while subtly adjusting her winged cape, a little something old  _and_  something new. “So we may begin working  _with_  you, and you may observe our... _kick-ass new moves_  up close.”

The grins and guffaws from all around make him laugh out loud and give in, “all right, all right, I’m in.” A few keystrokes and the system is set.

Even if they’re all mostly in workout clothes, pieces of suits that might someday  _be_ , it still feels like a triangle of power when he’s standing with them, staring down a hell of a lot of guns and holograms of baddies, bo right behind his left ankle, ready for the right moment to  _move_. It’s like he never really  _left_.

“All right, dude.” Bart is working out his hammies, holding one leg behind him, “before we get this shit  _started_ , give up the  _name_.”

Gar’s eyes light up, “so  _true_ , V. Fearless Leader has the roster. So what’s it gonna be?”

He grins a little, pulls the bo up to stretch his shoulders out just a bit for  _this_  little sitch. The anticipation is right on his bare heels, the power breathing down his neck from the metas at his back.

“For the time being,” he watches the laser cannons minutely adjust, the room powering  _on_ , “I’m going by Erebus,”  _the God of Darkness_. “Maybe I’ll try something  _else_  for the other side.”

“That? Is pretty kick ass.” Con muses, eyeing the line of guns and probable  _owfuck_  around them.

“Glad you’re with it,” is his reply as the bo slides down his shoulders, goes right back behind his ankle, and he straight-arms it, eyes narrowing when the machinery begins to rotate.

That familiar stance echoes, reverberates, and the metas behind him take  _point_ , facing out for whatever might come their way.

It’s the new one that replaces the  _old_  name still on the back of his tongue; it’s a new call  _out_  to gather and defend, the new name that makes them tense with  _time to fight_. When the red of the laser sites blips over the lot of them, he sinks just a little to balance on the balls of his feet, “Varangians.  _Strike!_ ”

They’re off and moving before the first shot erupts.

And it's better than the  _first time_  because back then they hadn't worked with each other,  _known_  one another,  _trusted._ So many integral things weren't  _there_ yet. So, this?

Is everything rolled up and hand-fucking-delivered.

Because they  _do_  break the system.

And it's the best power-down he's ever been in.

**

_The Child_

“Ah, there, there, precious one,” the deep voice coos.

The child in the bassinette calms, her eyes a stunning blue-violet just like her other father, picks out the silhouette in the shadows. Her whimpers ease into happy, gurgling sounds.

“My sweet is ready to play,” and he reaches down to lift her with unerring care, to pull her against the green robes she will one day inherit.

His beautiful, perfect  _heir_.

Her noises follow them down the fire-lit corridors, past training rooms, through a busily working command center coordinating efforts around the globe.

“And one day,” he continues to her as they enter the throne room where her caretakers wait and his seconds have updates on their progression, “all of this will be at your disposal. And no one will be able to stop you, yes, my little Robin? One day, you shall rule the  _world_.”

 


End file.
